Romania is among the top five countries in the world that send students to Harvard, except the US, but only one graduate has come back home to work in this country in eight years.
Mike Morris is the man whose office sees the young Romanians dreaming to attend one of the most prestigious schools on the other side of the Atlantic pass through. He is a Harvard graduate himself.
While in Romania on business - he runs the financial and operational leasing company Oxbridge Holdings, Morris was contacted by the people at Harvard ten years ago, who suggested he could conduct the local interviews with those picked from the piles of applications for a possible scholarship.
According to Morris, the American university gets about 100 letters from Romania in its mailbox every year.
He reckons he has interviewed 120 applicants over the past eight years, 24 of whom actually made it on the plane for Harvard. Still, he says that the number of Romanians that studied at Harvard in this interval actually reaches 30, with the difference made up by the Romanians that applied from abroad.
Morris thinks half of them actually graduated while 15 are still attending the university. Almost every young person he sent to the US to get an education preferred to stay and work there, attracted by the prospects of much higher gains than in Romania.
"As far as I know, only one came back here to work for a successful Romanian software company that his father-in-law owns," Morris added.
The Harvard representative says that despite the many Romanian graduates that would be interested to come back home if they were offered a decent job, Romanian companies are generally unwilling to pay them the wages they would deserve, even though some of them could afford to do so.
"Whereas a Harvard graduate makes around 60,000 dollars (49,700 euros) a year in the United States, they can consider themselves lucky if they are offered 1,000 dollars (828 euros) per month in Romania," Mike Morris says.
He adds that even if the young people came to work for a multinational that operates in Romania, they would not be paid as much as in the US, because the company will have to stick to the available wage structures adapted to the domestic market.
Harvard''s representative says Romania is among the top five countries in the world, except the United States, which sends students to the prestigious college, along with the United Kindgom, Bulgaria, China and India. As for the young people he has had the opportunity to interview during this period, Morris says most excel in mathematics or physics and have a very good command of English. However, he adds that he is very disappointed when they are arrogant, lack initiative or are ungrateful for the chance that is being offered to them.
"As far as I''m concerned, the ideal candidate is a person whom I''d like to have dinner with or have a cup of coffee with. Many of them are trying to impress me with their intelligence, which is a mistake, because this is taken for granted, since they are having the interview," Morris explains. liviu.alexandrescu@zf.ro
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