Recently, there have been Indonesian students who chose to study abroad with various initial intentions in increasing numbers. However, from the viewpoint of future national development it is feared that students finally may choose to...
moreRecently, there have been Indonesian students who chose to study abroad with various initial intentions in increasing numbers. However, from the viewpoint of future national development it is feared that students finally may choose to stay abroad rather than to go back to Indonesia and to contribute to developing their homeland. Not only for students but also for professionals, especially specialists and engineers, feel more desirable to work in developed countries rather than their homeland. Although this phenomenon is not conspicuous, it is very significant to Indonesia. This study aims to grasp the general situation of 'Brain Drain' in Indonesia, to explain the 'Brain Drain' process by constructing a System Dynamics model, and to estimate the effects of government's policies by simulations under a variety of policy scenarios. Two main methodologies are used in this study. First is the use of descriptive statistics. The second methodology is application of System Dynamics (SD) to social model building. The questionnaire results suggest that 'education' factor is the most influential for respondent's decision on where to live; then followed by 'economy', 'social', 'environment', and 'politics' factors. The results also indicate that most of respondents' occupations are students. Second, according to the data gathered for calculating the correlations between factors, 'economic' indicator is considered as the core factor because it has high correlations with other factors except for 'social' indicator. Three mixed policy scenarios are selected for simulation and showing the most optimal policy scenario by comparison with the base scenario: (1) education and economy; (2) social and education; and (3) politics and economy. The result of simulations shows that each mixed policies has its own impact in different aspects because it has different characteristics and concentrations, hence it depends on the government which scenario to follow. .
