Retaining Recent College Graduates in Boston: Is There a Brain Drain?

http://www.bostonredevelopmentauthority.org/getattachment/170db5fb-ad3b-4fbb-a143-82f7d7f4539e/

by wallflower • 12 years ago

26 19 12 years ago

Animats• 12 years ago

The city itself is home to 35 colleges and universities enrolling about 152,000 students.

The Redevelopment Authority is complaining that, after graduating, 4 out of 5 students leave. After 20 pages, they conclude that's what's supposed to happen.

VLM• 12 years ago

The thought experiment about 2/3 of the way thru is very amusing, in a city of basically constant size over previous decades, if a significant fraction of the grads actually stayed, the population doubling rate would be just a couple decades.

Another humorous way to look at it is a "large" fraction of the 150K grads are imports from across the country and around the world, so if the imports don't leave the city will obviously eventually fill up. Its a conservation of mass argument.

The report carefully avoided discussing why there are no new jobs on a net basis in Boston. The government there is just a tad oppressive, the rebels of 1776 have turned into the redcoats of 2014 and all that.

eli_gottlieb4• 12 years ago

The report carefully avoided discussing why there are no new jobs on a net basis in Boston. The government there is just a tad oppressive, the rebels of 1776 have turned into the redcoats of 2014 and all that.

Blaming the MA state government requires rather a lot of justification, considering the taxation levels are on par with California and MA doesn't (yet) even make noncompete agreements unenforceable.

eli_gottlieb4• 12 years ago

Of course there's a bloody brain drain. There's no affordable housing, and median salaries for most graduates are nowhere near commensurate with the cost of living in the Boston metro area. What do they expect, that already-indebted graduates should further impoverish ourselves for the privilege of living in a cold, dark, snobby city with a severe inferiority complex?

TTPrograms4• 12 years ago

Starting Median pay in Boston: $50,500 - http://www.forbes.com/pictures/efkk45mhij/no-10-best-paying-...

Starting Median pay in San Fran: $57,200 - http://www.forbes.com/pictures/efkk45mhij/no-2-best-paying-c...

Average Rent in Boston (1 BR): ~$2000 - http://boston.jumpshell.com/how-to/where-to-live-in-boston/a...

Average Rent in San Fran (1 BR): $2873 - http://www.rentjungle.com/average-rent-in-san-francisco-rent...

Rent / Salary in Boston: 0.0396

Rent / Salary in San Fran: 0.0502

"There's no affordable housing, and median salaries for most graduates are nowhere near commensurate with the cost of living in the Boston metro area." Certainly no worse than San Fran, at least. As to the rest of the comment, how has Boston hurt you?

kourt2• 12 years ago

As much as I love Boston, SF is not the only other city in the world, and both cities are extremely atypical. The graduates are likely leaving for a place where they can get a $49,500 salary and a $700 apartment.

EDIT: and your percentages are wrong: try 48% of gross for BOS and 60% of gross for SF. Figure 40% for taxes and you have either very little for food, insurance, medical care, transportation, clothing, entertainment or you're already negative. Oh, and I forgot: STUDENT LOANS.

eli_gottlieb4• 12 years ago

"There's no affordable housing, and median salaries for most graduates are nowhere near commensurate with the cost of living in the Boston metro area." Certainly no worse than San Fran, at least.

So, certainly no worse than the single least affordable city in the entire country.

As to the rest of the comment, how has Boston hurt you?

Honestly, I just kinda hate cold climate zones, especially when they're snobby while also offering low quality of life. But mostly I just really hate cold climates.

nck4222• 12 years ago

Did you read the paper at all? You're argument doesn't really address anything they say. They cite research saying that the most important thing in retaining graduates is availability of jobs, not housing, city lifestyle, etc... And that since Boston produces so many graduates, it's unrealistic to think they're all going to stay, simply because there aren't jobs for all of them.

You're arguing a point that the paper isn't making.

EDIT: Spelling

dk8996• 12 years ago

I think there is a bigger problem in Boston than the cost of living. For people with tech degrees, there isn't enough of a startup engine to create enough opportunities (jobs, risky money, talent).

1) Boston seems to be risk averse when it comes to investing -- its just the mind-set.

2) Boston is really SaaS focused (safe) -- most young people want to work in a consumer space.

3) There isn't enough executive talent and for that matter VP level talent. You can see the evidence in the lack of IPOs. How good number of Boston companies seem to fall out of sky at the same stage (I can name some names but I won’t).

4) Facebook and Dropbox should of been Boston companies.

PS: I still love Boston and I am really happy to be part of the tech scene with such a bright future.

percent• 12 years ago

Yeah, Boston has something funky going on. It's hard to pin it down exactly. It's cultural. Seems like it's changing, but slowly.

jofer• 12 years ago

On a side note, while the visualization at the start of the paper is quite nifty, does the rotation make it annoying to read for anyone else, or is that just me?

Also, from a visualization standpoint, it's an interesting and original figure, it's rather hard to interpret. I'd argue that two or three separate conventional figures showing the same thing would make the point more clearly in about the same amount of space.

That having been said, it's a unique and compact way to display the data. I'm just not sure it's an effective communication tool. (Of course, I'd be rather proud of it if I'd made it...)

chrisbennet• 12 years ago

This is a PDF! Please note that in the title. Some of us don't want to download PDFs to our mobile devices.

Retaining Recent College Graduates in Boston: Is There a Brain Drain?

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