Life satisfaction of returnee scholarship holders in Serbia
Authors: Vasojevic Nena , Kirin Snezana 
Published: January 2020

Educated and talented people drive progress in every country. That?s why no
country can neglect these people; that would mean losing one?s own potential.
This paper emphasises the importance of educating scholarship students abroad
as a means of developing and accumulating human resources and a key
determinant of sustainable development in the modern world. Investing in the
education of the best students (scholarship holders) is an investment in the
future, which brings multiple benefits on a social, economic, and political
level. Migration is an important phenomenon that attracts public attention,
especially when it comes to highly educated experts leaving their home
country in search of better education. Highly educated experts have been
leaving Serbia for several decades, which poses an obvious problem for local
society. The topic of permanent migration is dominant both in foreign and
domestic literature, but studies on the temporary migration of highly
educated students (scholarship holders) is almost nonexistent. The aim of
this paper is to point out the value of returnee scholarship holders and the
importance of creating the appropriate conditions for them to stay in the
country. A survey conducted on a group of 96 returnee scholarship holders
identified factors that affect their satisfaction with living in Serbia. The
survey involved experts from Serbia who were educated abroad as scholarship
holders, where they acquired academic titles and are now employed: as faculty
teachers (32); as researchers at scientific institutes (24); in the private
sector (21); at universities (12); in state administrative departments (5);
and in medical institutions (2). The criterion for selecting this group of
respondents was that they had stayed abroad as scholarship holders, whether
they used scholarships from domestic (24) or foreign (72) funds. Scholarship
students go abroad mostly because of their personal aspirations for training,
gaining new experiences, and because of the inability to study the desired
discipline in their country, as was the case for 74 respondents. The main
reasons for deciding to return are family (25) and the belief that they have
a good chance to work in Serbia (18), while 16 respondents could not stay
abroad. In this paper, we used the factor analysis method. The main factors
that create satisfaction with life in Serbia are isolated. These factors are:
satisfaction with work and a set of factors that strongly correlate with it
(the ability to make decisions, the implementation of acquired knowledge,
peer acceptance), as well as the recognition of their diploma in Serbia
without any difficulties. By improving these factors, there might be a
significant increase in the chance that returnee scholarship holders remain
in Serbia for a long time. Based on this, it would be wise to build a
strategy on how to encourage returnee scholarship holders to stay in the
country. The results obtained in this study represent a contribution to a
search for a strategy that will attract, involve, and retain educated people
in the country.