Aren't professionals from different countries the same? I am a college senior in America. I was born in a very poor country, not in North America nor in Europe. I recently visited my home country and encountered a teacher from an elite high school. He told me that teachers from top high schools often have access to high school-leaving national exam papers ahead of the exams.

I also remember that when I was in high school(in my native country) a lab tech told a group of us, that students from even poorer schools in the countryside, who only saw equipped labs on the day of the national exams, often had their grades "boosted". 

The high school teacher I met also told me that in addition to pure merit in national exams, exam graders also considered quotas when assigning grades ie how many slots do they need in med/engineering schools.

Are there any resources you would recommend that document and explain the motivations behind such practices? Of course, if I go to admissions officers of colleges in my country, they would tell me that all admissions and grading is based on pure merit only. 

Where can I get the "real skinny" about such things?

Leaders in developing countries often travel abroad for medical treatment. Privacy considerations aside, isn't a physician/engineer from (insert your favorite third-world country here) just a good as his equivalent in Germany?

CLARIFICATION
I apologise if my question has confused you. There's a book called "Comrade Einstein". It describes systematic discrimination against Jews in Russian math departments. Link is here. Other similar books have been written, but I don't have them nearby. If I was a Jewish parent living in Russia, a book such as the above would make me want to send my children elsewhere. And, if anyone asked I would at least have some documentation, that would make a plausible defense of my belief and not make me look paranoid. 

Are there any similar books, reports etc that deal with "3rd-world" countries?
Since the treatment of professionals of all kinds is highly variable by country and partly determined by long lived cultural factors, there is no place to get a definitive answer unless someone has done some research on it. 

In some cultures, parts of India come to mind, professors are very highly regarded as they can provide a boos upwards in a stratified country. I've had students literally kneeling at my feet (just for lack of chairs) in my office. When I expressed discomfort at that, some students from India said that, no, it feel perfectly natural to be kneeling at the feet of their guru. 

In some other places, professors get spat upon. 

However, to say things are equal is a mistake. Often a good education depends on an institution having a lot of money for, say, laboratories, as you note. It is harder to get qualified to a certain standard in poorer places than in richer ones, just because of available resources. I suspect there is a positive correlation between the quality of education in a country and the economic well being there. It isn't perfect, of course. Even in the US, the quality of pre-college education is suffering from want of resources in spite of the US being a fairly rich country. 

But cultural differences can also lead to bad effects such as discrimination. Some well qualified medical doctors, moving to the US, find that they aren't allowed to practice medicine and the path to a license is very arduous.