Grants for foreign students, yes – when they add value

Sometimes we still hear the heated discussion about whether the Portuguese state should award post-graduation grants (PhD) to foreign students. The arguments against it are roughly aligned as follows: using taxpayer money to pay for the education of foreigners is a waste of public money, especially because after their personal valorisation is finished, they leave the country and others will benefit with what they have learned.

This rationale is based on a fundamental assumption: that the doctoral activity is educational-academic-training and the result is human resources. If so, the idea makes sense.

What this attitude ignores is that, in a developed country, scientific research is an activity with a high potential for profitability. If possible, the idea is to extract value from the work that is carried out by a grant holder so that its added value is higher than the grant itself. Then, the grant is an investment and not a donation. Instead of a subsidy for the survival of the unproductive academic structures, it is an encouragement for carrying out high level activities that generate financial and other less tangible profits.

Therefore, the doctoral activity is perceived as being included in a production chain where the result is knowledge that must be valorised. Therefore, labour is not exploited since it is value-added through the doctoral activity itself. So, it’s a win-win situation.

It is not possible to claim for the urgency of a quantity and quality leap in our Portuguese science and technology transfer process and then dry the source of labour, a human resource that is a crucial element in this process. All the countries that have developed before Portugal understood it.

So, it is important to congratulate the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) for its initiative of enabling, under certain conditions, foreign students from national excellence institutions to benefit from doctoral grants –  and this means that the national institutions will benefit from these grant holders in return.

In order to apply this policy, it is necessary to establish a verification mechanism for the value of the expected profit for each of the grants awarded by the Portuguese state to a foreign student.

It is also necessary to re-think and improve the process of assessment/verification of the expected and achieved contribution for each investment of this kind.