Awhile back I riff'd on Iowa's Brain Drain. Signs are we're not alone out here in the cornfields as we watch our best and brightest leave our homes. An article in today's NY Times titled MBA Students Bypassing Wall Street for A Summer in India (blog friendly link) profiles a growing trend among graduates of top flight business schools to intern not here in the US with prestigious US firms but overseas with overseas' firms.
Granted it's a wonderful experience for the student. And it's always worthwhile to grow the number of US citizens with extended experience outside the US. I worked in Germany for 6 months and Australia for 2, back in the day. Great experience. Wouldn't trade it for the world.
But the quote here caught my eye:
Other companies, and even the schools themselves, are looking at internships as a step toward attracting bright young Americans to work in India. Infosys, for instance, hired Joshua Bornstein, a former intern from Claremont McKenna College in California, nearly two years ago as its first American employee based in India.
"In this increasingly global economy, we would expect to see India become an even greater source of employment for our students," Sheryle Dirks, director of the Career Management Center at Fuqua, said.
And the goal of overseas firms bringing US students to intern is the same goal here in the US with US firms recruiting interns. The recruiting company expects the interns to remain with the company after graduation. Companies don't donate their time to bring along young, fresh-scrubbed interns only to see them leave, with their knowledge, for a competitor. They expect their investment of time and training the intern to be rewarded with the intern joining the firm as a knowledgeable employee upon the intern's graduation.
It's a trickle now. But these trends seem to take on a life of their own. And that life means the creativity and intelligence, the entrepreneurship, the global perspective gained from interns working overseas will contribute to high-paying, job-creating, enterprises overseas.
I never thought Iowa would be the microcosm for a national trend.
Comments