When and Why Recent University Graduates Leave Cuba
By Amado Viera
HAVANA TIMES – In recent weeks, Michel has spent much of his free time preparing to apply for a master’s program abroad.
He’s not doing it out of a mere desire for self-improvement. If that were the case, it would have been enough to talk to the management at the electric services company where he works in the city of Camagüey. For the past couple of years, his bosses have been encouraging him to pursue various postgraduate degrees (in Cuba), hoping he might fill one of the many vacancies left by specialists who have departed for the private sector or emigrated.
But three years after graduating as an electrical engineer from the University of Las Villas, Michel sees little prospect for his professional future on the island. A prestigious engineer he met during his student internships is exactly the model he doesn’t want to become. “After nearly 50 years of work, he retired with a pension of less than 4,000 pesos a month (just over 10 dollars), and now he survives alongside his wife by selling plastic bags at a market… a man who was a top-level engineer,” he lamented.
Where Michel is employed, most workers are either elderly or very young. The older ones consider themselves too old to try their luck in the informal economy and stay in their jobs because they offer a meagre but stable income. The younger ones have just left school and haven’t yet defined their futures, though it’s likely most will leave in a few years. The biggest absences are among middle-aged engineers and technicians and young workers who’ve already gained some experience, people like Michel. In fact, of the three recent graduates who joined the company the same year as he did, only Michel remains.
His two former classmates left the country last year—one to the United States and the other to Brazil—to pursue a master’s degree.
Michel is now applying to the same program in Brazil, guided by his friend. “But I haven’t said anything at work to avoid problems. They made it really hard for my friend, right up to the last minute. They even delayed processing his resignation for three months, and he had to start classes virtually until he finally got to Brazil. That’s why he advised me to keep quiet, and if I’m accepted, just leave without saying a word. Let them figure it out afterward.”
Fewer and Fewer Young People
In the mid-1990s, a survey by the Youth Studies Center revealed that 42% of young workers were “dissatisfied or moderately dissatisfied with their work”—a sentiment that grew with age and education level. The main reasons were related to wages, working conditions, and opportunities for advancement and development.
A decade later, researcher Abel Ponce compared those findings to another survey conducted by the same center in 2004, which found that “this indicator had risen significantly, especially in sectors tied to the state.” The discontent had an economic slant: 65% of young workers described their financial situation as “pressing or just enough for very basic needs.”
The same expert noted that when young Cubans considered leaving the country as a solution to their problems, their aspirations were modest. “The goal isn’t to become a millionaire, but to meet one’s needs comfortably. […] A major factor is being able to support their family in Cuba.” Emigration, then, had become both a viable and appealing life project. If emigration rates kept increasing, the island could face a scenario like that of several Central American and Caribbean nations, which routinely lose up to 70% of their university-educated population, jeopardizing their development prospects.
Today, even that figure may underestimate the percentage of young professionals who leave their jobs within five years of graduating, either to leave the country or to take on lower-skilled but better-paid work.
“Demographic decline should be seen less as a challenge and more as a reality already impacting every area of social life and the economy in our country. Decision-makers need to consider this when planning such essential matters as labor force needs. We’re even seeing sectors like tourism and private businesses—traditionally attractive because of their relatively high salaries—struggling to meet their labor demands,” said Antonio Aja, director of the Center for Demographic Studies at the University of Havana, just a few weeks ago.
The meeting where he shared these reflections was presided over by Prime Minister Manuel Marrero, who merely recommended “continuing to study the problem to propose comprehensive solutions”—a phrase that, in practice, implies no concrete decisions.
For years, the government has acknowledged the hemorrhaging caused by massive emigration, largely of university-trained youth. But it is in no position to apply either of the two measures that could curb the trend: raise salaries or reinstate the travel restrictions that existed prior to January 2013. Official discourse says the first is out of the question due to the economic crisis, and the second could provoke unpredictable social unrest.
As a stopgap, the authorities have opted to slow down the process of legalizing academic documents required for studying or working abroad. Only a handful of international legal buffets in Havana can process them in under two months; through the standard route of most law firms, the process can take between six months and a year.
Leaving as a Life Plan
Whenever they’re asked if they plan to have children, Yudaisy and her husband dodge the question with vague, noncommittal answers. Planning for the future is hard when you live in a rented home, rely on their salaries as dentists, and get irregular income from working as online sales agents.
Their only concrete plan is to leave Cuba—either when Yudaisy’s husband obtains Spanish citizenship through Spain’s Law of Democratic Memory, or if one of them earns a scholarship to study abroad. “We submitted our degrees and other documents for apostille at the Foreign Ministry months ago, and if all goes well, we’ll be able to start applying next year. Honestly, we don’t see ourselves in Cuba five years from now,” she confessed. Out of fear of being regulated (banned from travel), only their relatives and a few close friends know their plans.
More than half of Yudaisy’s classmates have emigrated since they graduated five years ago. And among her husband’s peers, who graduated two years earlier, the percentage is even higher. “It’s almost an inevitable fate,” Yudaisy says. “It’s hard for everyone to leave, but if you have the chance to go and improve professionally at the same time, there’s not much to think about. At this point, we can’t even imagine our future in Cuba.”
A former best friend of mine in Cuba (former because we haven’t been in touch for at least 10 years) was trained as an Orthopedic surgeon at the University of Havana. However, when we met, he was a bartender at a popular Cabaret in Central Havana. Why the career change? Because he was making more in tips in one shift, than he was making for the entire month as a doctor. As soon as the law changed in Cuba that eliminated the need to obtain an exit Visa in order to travel outside of the country, he emigrated. The Castro dictatorship refused to give him a certified copy of his professional credentials so all he had to show as proof of his education was the framed diploma he was given at graduation. He married a German woman and moved to Germany with her. With no proof of his professional education, he worked as a physician’s assistant and a surgical nurse for 3 years before he was able to get his certification as a medical doctor in Germany. Nonetheless, he claimed at the time that he had no regrets.