In the 1950s the government of Curac ¸ao set up a scholarship programme. Nowadays
about four hundred students leave the island annually to study abroad, mainly at
universities in The Netherlands. Of these students only 30 per cent return to the island
after they graduate. This means a considerable loss to the creative class, the so-called
brain drain. To reduce this drain the University of the Netherlands Antilles (UNA) was
founded in January 1979 as the successor of the School of Law that was founded in the
early 1970s (Heiligers, 2004). Since the year 2002 the number of students has increased
significantly (Table V).