EFFECT OF BRAIN DRAIN ON THE QUALITY OF HIGHER EDUCATION IN ZIMBABWE'S STATE UNIVERSITIES

The considerable brain drain, the steady flow of skilled academic human capital to better resourced institutions and economies, remains a major challenge to the higher education sector in Sub-Saharan Africa, Zimbabwe's state universities are not spared of it. Previous case-study findings from two Zimbabwean universities and one faculty indicated that staff attrition was largely due to poor working conditions and low salaries. That investigation is taken a step further in this paper, which is a multi-institutional and multi-faculty study involving 157 current and former academic staff at 11 Zimbabwean state universities (151 after data-quality screening). The internal consistency of all measurement scales was good (Cronbach's alpha = 0.82-0.93). As demonstrated in the descriptive and inferential analysis (independent-samples t-test, one-way ANOVA, Pearson correlation, and multiple linear regression), there is no one factor that stands alone as the most important push factor, but rather a cluster of factors that are close together in terms of their perceived importance, with the most important factors being: limited career growth (M = 3.06), poor working conditions (M = 3.05), currency and macroeconomic instability (M = 3.04), and poor remuneration (M = 3.03). Perceived push-factor intensity was significantly different between the eleven institutions (F = 1.93, p = .046), but not significantly different between the eight faculties (F = 1.13, p = .348), which was not the case in the previous two-university case study. Career-growth- and governance-related causes (limited career growth, ineffective benefits application, corruption and nepotism) were the only significant predictors of perceived overall quality reduction in a regression model (beta = 0.495, p = .006, R-squared = .213). The intensity of the push factor was significantly positively correlated with staff turnover intention (r = .662, p < .001), and organisational commitment was negatively correlated with staff turnover intention (r = -.586, p < .001). Of the 30 former staff that were surveyed, half transferred to academic institutions outside Africa and the most common reason for departure was poor remuneration (30%). Overall, institutional retention strategies were seen as moderately effective, and the more frequently a strategy was used the higher its effectiveness ratings (r = .563, p = < .001). The results suggest a tailored, institution- and governance-specific solution to staff retention, and do not indicate a one-size-fits-all remedy for the sector, from which recommendations are drawn to be offered to the management of universities, the government and future researchers.