Genuine brain circulation is the objective for Cyprus, Minister of Education, Sports and Youth, Athena Michaelidou, said on Tuesday at the Cyprus Forum, noting that Cyprus students and researchers should be free to live, gain experience and return if they wish, while the country should also be able to attract and retain talent from elsewhere.
Speaking during a panel discussion on the role of university alliances in higher education and talent retention, Michaelidou said that the most important contribution of such alliances is to make Europe tangible in the everyday lives of students, researchers, and staff.
‘Democracy is sustained not only by institutions and laws, but also by trust, active participation, equal opportunity, and the ability of people from different countries and backgrounds to learn and work together,’ she said, noting that European university alliances ‘provide precisely this shared space’. ‘They enable students to learn across borders, academics to develop joint research communities, and of course universities to engage collectively with local communities, employers, and wider society’, she added.
In doing so, the Minister said, they help translate European values into lived experience. ‘At a time when democratic societies face increasing disinformation, European university alliances can also play a vital role in strengthening critical thinking, democratic literacy, and mutual understanding’, she said. They provide opportunities for young Europeans not only to experience European cooperation, but also to develop the competences needed to safeguard our democratic values, she added.
On what university alliances can do to reverse brain drain, Michaelidou said that the policy challenge is to ensure that moving abroad ‘is a genuine choice, not the only route to a high-quality career or an irreversible departure for talented people’. This calls for credible opportunities both at home and across Europe, strong research and innovation ecosystem, transparent career pathways, access to competitive funding, partnerships with innovative employers and conditions that support internationally connected careers.
Equally important, the Minister said, are structured links with researchers and graduates abroad, so that mobility generates continuing cooperation, knowledge transfer and opportunities for return. ‘This requires practical policy measures including joint research appointments, stronger university-industry partnerships and structured engagement with our scientific diaspora’, she said.
She noted that European university alliances can provide the institutional framework for such initiatives, enabling researchers to maintain professional connections across borders without having to make a permanent choice between their home country and international career. ‘For Cyprus, the objective is genuine brain circulation. Cyprus students and researchers should be free to live, gain experience and return if they wish, while Cyprus should also be able to attract and retain talent from elsewhere,’ Michaelidou said.
‘To achieve this, we need an open, attractive and internationally connected higher education system, we are gaining that, we are doing everything to have this internalisation, even amending laws, supported by opportunities for mobility and cooperation’, she said.
European university alliances, she added, can make a significant contribution by building lasting academic and professional networks that remain active even when individuals move between countries and institutions.