Attracting international top talent is crucial for Flanders

Yesterday, De Tijd reported that the Flemish government negotiators are considering curbing the influx of non-European students into higher education. In response to this, VARIO is drawing attention to its repeated plea to put attracting and anchoring top international talent high on the government agenda. This is absolutely necessary if we want to bring Flanders into the world top of innovative knowledge regions. In the words of Luc Sels, rector of KU Leuven, in his opening speech for the new academic year, “Show Flanders to the world, and welcome the world to Flanders: one cannot exist without the other. That is not an attack on language and culture, but rather an assurance of our prosperity and in line with our mission in the world.”
VARIO's strategy is to integrate the much-needed foreign STEM profiles into our private labour market through the attraction of our highly regarded knowledge institutions (universities and colleges, strategic research institutions, ...). In this way, Flanders reaps the benefits of investing in international students who obtain a Belgian diploma. VARIO refers to the research that the advisory council carried out in collaboration with the VLIR (Flemish Interuniversity Council) by Kristof De Witte, education economist at KU Leuven, which showed that an international student yields more benefits than costs, as many continue to work in Belgium for a while after their studies. Moreover, migration via our education system is good for integration, which has a positive effect on innovation and productivity.

VARIO has put this theme on the map with its very first advisory report in 2017 and has kept it permanently under the attention of policy makers ever since. As recently as May this year, VARIO, together with the Dutch AWTI, initiated a Joint Statement on “The Importance of European and national policies to attract non-European STEM talent to Europe,” which was signed by a number of international sister organizations.