Who bears the costs for vocational or academic training and education?

‘Germany’ as a case stands for a country that has only recently opened up significantly to labour migration beyond the academic skilled. It has set up numerous state-led and subsidised programmes to train, attract and recruit professionals in a broad range of sectors. The case of Germany's skilled migration programmes and the question where the education and training of the professionals primarily take place (pre- and/or post-migration) is used as a proxy to discuss the implications of such programmes with regard to the critical question of who bears the cost for education and training and whether the programmes contribute or counter the risk of brain drain. In thesis 5 of the manifesto, the authors take a sceptical position concerning the programmes Germany is involved in. Their scepticism addresses practical implementation issues, the rather small scale of such well-designed and comparatively fair or ethical programmes as well as pointing to the problematique that the programmes are situated in an uneven global system.