An influx of young people to breathe life into Dundee would be a great thing.
But how do you get thousands of hard-working, ambitious people to come to a city like ours?
I’d like to add my voice to that of Professor Iain Gillespie, principal of Dundee University, who last week expressed fears over attracting international students and staff to Dundee.
I’d also go a bit further down that line of thinking.
Scotland is facing a demographics time bomb.
By 2072 the number of over-65s will have risen to 32% (from 20% today) of the population.
Children will drop from 16% to 12%.
If you are under 40, by the time you reach retirement there won’t be enough taxpayers to fund your pension.
And this is true for many nations.
China, due to the law they had limiting couples to one child, is in deep trouble.
Their vast population is getting old simultaneously.
Yet few countries seem to be addressing this. They’re hiding from it.
Students could fuel Dundee population boom
Despite the world’s population topping nine billion recently, from our point of view the young are in the wrong places.
Youthful, energetic, motivated people are going to become a world commodity.
It is imperative that if Scotland isn’t producing enough young people, we import them. Not in their hundreds, but hundreds of thousands.
Once government grasps this as the emergency it is, Dundee should be ready.
We should have plans in place to lead the way.
Have blueprints to boost the size of our university campuses, create an outline plan to expand student accommodation capacity ten or twentyfold.
It is, quite openly, using education to attract tens of thousands of students to Dundee. And bring their extended families, especially children, with them.
It’s also an investment opportunity.
Our city and our nation’s infrastructure would have to be scaled up.
Imagine the boost to growth figures that would bring.
Send us your brightest and your best
The places to “shop” for students are indicated by looking at the nations with the highest birth rates.
Most are in Africa, south of the Sahara.
We should have talent scouts and recruiters in villages across the Sahel saying: “Stick in at school, we want you in Scotland”.
Nations like Niger, Mali, Somalia, and Cameroon.
Some will take an education and go home or go elsewhere.
But many will make lives here.
Hopefully enough to rejuvenate an old, and getting older, Dundee.
We should offer incentives to stay to the brightest and best immigrants who have ideas and will start businesses.
Without immigrants, there would be no Google. Sergey Brin came to the U.S. at age 6: https://t.co/iEo7wpp3sK pic.twitter.com/W0k3fqNQx8
— Forbes (@Forbes) December 21, 2015
We’ll find our own Sergey Brin who founded Google, Steve Chen (YouTube), or Pierre Omidyar (eBay).
Canada “gets it”. This is exactly what they are doing.
They plan to attract 1.5 million new Canadians in the next three years.
All of Scotland, indeed most of Europe, will have to do this.
Let’s get ahead. Let’s get planning.
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