By Matt Tarleton, Project Associate.

 I recently wrote a piece about the migration patterns of the college educated, identifying some of the metropolitan areas that have been successful in attracting new residents with average educational attainment levels that exceed the educational attainment levels of their existing resident population.

A new paper by Chad Moutray, Chief Economist and Director of Economic Research at the Office of Advocacy of the Small Business Administration, entitled “Educational Attainment, Brain Drain, and Self-employment: Examining the Interstate Mobility of Baccalaureate Graduates, 1993-2003” goes into great detail in examining the factors that determine the geographic mobility of recent college graduates.

The paper examines employment and location of college graduates during the ten year period following the awarding of a bachelor’s degree. The analysis examines inter-state mobility for the graduating class of 1993. Among Dr. Moutray’s key findings are the following:

• Those who attended more expensive, top-tier universities are more mobile. Graduates from Research I and Research II universities in the Carnegie classification were six percent more likely to relocate to another state during the study period than those who did not attend these universities. Those who paid $5,000 or more per semester in tuition and fees in 1993 were between 18 and 21 percent more likely to relocate during the study period, all else constant.
• States that experienced real GDP growth of 10 percent or more than the national average between 1993 and 2003 were 13 to 15 percent more likely to have students moving there from another state.
• Of those students who were mobile during the study period, there was a clear correlation between mobility and urbanity. That is to say, this sample confirmed that college graduates were moving to more urban areas with greater population densities, and away from more rural areas with lower population densities.
• The student’s undergraduate major has little effect on mobility, with two exceptions. Education majors were six percent less likely to relocate that their non-education counterparts, while business majors were roughly 3.5 percent less likely to relocate during the study period.
• Graduates with relatively high GPAs are more likely to relocate than those with lower GPAs (likely driven by earnings potential and employability).
• As expected, the presence of strong ties to the home states reduces the likelihood of relocation. Homeownership was found to decrease the likelihood of relocation by over 12 percent for wage and salary workers and between 22 and 24 percent for self-employed recent graduates, all other factors constant. Marriage, the presence of children, and the presence of other family were all found to reduce the likelihood of relocation, confirming the conventional wisdom.  
• There was no significant impact of race or ethnicity on the likelihood of relocation, except for Hispanic, which were found to be between 12 and 14 percent less likely to relocate to another state, all else constant.
• Graduates who noted that they had a strong desire to become leaders in their community were between 3.5 and 3.7 percent more likely to move to another state.  

 Overwhelmingly, the paper confirms that students with higher levels of academic achievement are more likely to relocate to another state if given the right opportunity. This “brain drain” is a concern for communities nationwide. So what does this mean for policymakers? Dr. Moutray says it best:

"Some of the more surprising findings are found in the motivations and future priorities students expressed in their senior years of college. For instance, students who were more likely to stay in their home state cited being ‘well-off financially’ and ‘having time for extracurricular activities’ as being important to them. They also noted that they wanted to pursue ‘intellectually challenging work.’ These provide some clues to what it takes for students to want to stay local, and policymakers and employers might want to think of programs that might keep the brightest students from moving away."

Moreover, the findings regarding homeownership and density provide other hints that policies to encourage such attributes may contribute to the retention of college graduates. I encourage you to read the full paper (you can find it here) and consider what these findings mean for your community.