There's a trend amongst college graduates leads to many leaving their home state.
Since she was 14, Nina De Salvo, a senior studying education, knew that she didn’t want to stay in Millford, Ohio, a suburb outside of Cincinnati, her whole life. She said the decision was based on a combination of teenage rebellion and a love of travel.
“Cincinnati has always seemed like a really incestuous place to me,” she said. “Not in the literal sense, but in the sense that everybody is born here, lives here and dies here.”
She said she hated the fact that everyone who grew up there ended up coming back.
“I felt like I didn’t want to be someone who never lived outside Ohio,” she said.
Now that she’s about to graduate from Ohio University, she said she is already planning to move to the Los Angeles area, where her boyfriend lives, and begin a career teaching middle- or high-school level English.
De Salvo is not alone in her desire to leave the state to pursue opportunities.
Officials call it the “brain drain,” — the trend of college-educated students leaving their state after graduation to begin careers somewhere else.
Ohio produces more bachelor's degrees per capita than the national average, but is 35th in the nation in terms of residents with a bachelor’s degree or higher, according to a 2010 report from the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education.
At OU, 42 percent of alumni work outside the state, according to the university’s economic impact report.
“This is not a new topic,” said Laura Myers, chief of staff to the university’s provost. “I think it’s always been a part of the national conversation, I remember even when I was graduating.”
State Representative Debbie Phillips, D-Albany, said the brain drain is a cause of concern for officials in Ohio because it deprives the state’s economy of high-level jobs.
“I think what we’ve seen over a pretty long time is people just moving away because there aren’t many jobs here,” she said.
While the university brings in jobs and promotes an “entrepreneurial spirit,” Phillips said the departure of students after graduation hurts the local economy.
“I think what our region needs is really high quality infrastructure so these people can stay here,” Phillips said.
She said that infrastructure needs to include not only traditional jobs, but also more technologically cutting-edge jobs.
Jeff Robinson, spokesman for the Ohio Board of Regents, said the reasons behind the brain drain vary depending on the individual, but that the way to fix it is to make the state more competitive.
“Certainly what we’re doing is trying to draw students from out of state and even from around the world to want to work here,” he said.
Robinson said his department was trying to accomplish that by providing experiential learning opportunities for students in college, decreasing the cost of tuition and providing work opportunities for college students straight out of school.
De Salvo said she wants to move to California because she feels there are more opportunities for teachers there.
“With education, it seems to be that in more liberal states there are less cuts to education funding,” she said.
She said with Ohio cutting funds to education, it made sense for her to “aim for a blue state.”
De Salvo said once she does make it to California, she doesn’t intend on ever coming back.
Ashley Walker, a sophomore studying communication, said she also believes she could find more opportunities in another state.
Walker, who wants to go into public relations, grew up in Cleveland. She said although she knows she could find a job in Ohio, she thinks she could be more successful in New York or California.
“In order to get, professionally, where I want to be in life, I need more than Ohio,” she said.
She said she has family ties in both states. She was born in California, and her mother works in public relations in New York.
Despite those ties, she said she wouldn’t be opposed to staying in Ohio if she thought it had opportunities for her.
“I really do love Ohio,” she said. “People tell me that you don’t ever love Ohio, you just get used to it, but I don’t think that’s true.”
But she said that doesn’t change her opinions on staying.
“I think the place has a very big part to play on a person’s success,” she said. “I guess, for me, I just think you shouldn’t stop until you get to where you want to be.”
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