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This strategy worked pretty well in Brazil, where they were referred to as 'sandwich PhDs'. The difficulty was providing good conditions for people to thrive locally after their PhDs. But it should also be noted that, in the case of the researchers who ultimately stayed or returned to institutions abroad, it also provided a great mentoring network for the next generation of students, as well as a valuable resource for the local scientific community through consortia, collaborations, reagent sharing, etc.
“Most PhDs focus on the individual, but in this programme, the focus was on building institutional capacity at Makerere,” Waiswa says. “The research you do was also meant to be aligned to national development priorities.”
