BRA and UMass Donahue Institute release new report that reframes the “brain drain” debate

BRA and UMass Donahue Institute release new report that reframes the “brain drain” debate

Researchers suggest that size and share of young, educated population is a better indicator of economic vitality than number of graduates retained annually

BOSTON – Today, researchers from the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) and the University of Massachusetts Donahue Institute released a new report that attempts to reframe a long-running debate about the Boston metro area’s ability to retain the college and university graduates it produces. The BRA-UMass study reviews two notable reports from the last ten years – a 2003 analysis by Boston Consulting Group for the Boston Foundation and a 2013 study by Northeastern University, both of which found that approximately half of Boston’s graduates leave the region after obtaining a degree.

These findings have led some people to conclude that Boston suffers from “brain drain,” which is generally defined as a large-scale departure of highly skilled, college-educated individuals due to a lack of economic opportunity. Critics have raised concerns about the difficulty of retaining graduates and how this challenge may negatively impact the local economy.

However, the new report entitled “Retaining Recent College Graduates in Boston: Is There a Brain Drain?” argues that neither brain drain nor retention is a good indicator of how well Boston’s economy performs with regard to its need for younger, college-educated workers. Instead, the authors propose that the size and share of this population is what is most important to the vitality of Boston and its metro area. The report offers reasons for why it is not surprising for Boston to have a lower retention rate than other metro areas, most notably because so many students from outside of here come to study. Recent Census data shows that Boston has very high concentrations of young adults and college-educated workers compared to other major cities.

“The problem of graduate retention in Boston has been overstated because prior studies have focused on retention rates without looking at the bigger picture,” said Alvaro Lima, Director of Research at the BRA and an author of the new report. “What our analysis shows, however, is that we cannot realistically expect to retain everyone that graduates from a local institution. More importantly, we found that Boston’s labor market, and higher education sector in particular, are increasingly healthy and global.”

As context for the report, researchers looked at a variety of population trends. Between 2000 and 2010, Boston’s 20 to 34 year old demographic grew 11 percent, far faster than the statewide average for population growth. Overall this age group makes up 35 percent of Boston’s population, the highest proportion of any major American city. Only Austin, Seattle, Washington D.C., and Columbus, OH, have more than 30 percent of their population within this age range. In Boston, the 25 to 34 year old demographic, seen as representing a more “permanent” set of young workers, also grew between 2000 and 2010 (by 2.7 percent).

Total college enrollment in Boston has increased from 86,000 to 101,000 in the past decade, and almost 16.5 percent of the city’s total population is college-enrolled, again the highest rate among major U.S. cities. 40 percent of Boston’s population has a college degree, compared to a nationwide average of 28 percent, and over half of Boston’s residents with a college degree are between the ages of 20 and 34.

“These are hardly signs of a mass exodus of well-educated young adults,” the report notes.

The new study points out that the ability to attract young highly skilled graduates from outside of Boston is as important as retaining those who come here for their education. The notion is that employers are concerned with the supply of skilled labor for the jobs that they need to fill, not with where a person obtained his or her degree. A review of job vacancy data for metro Boston does not suggest that there is a significant skilled labor shortage in the region.

Prior studies have suggested that policymakers do more to retain graduates of local institutions, but the new report is the first to attempt to quantify Boston’s capacity for increasing retention. And it shows that the city produces far more graduates than job openings. The report estimates that approximately 150,000 students graduate annually with a bachelor’s degree or higher from area institutions. In comparison, the study estimates that there are only about 71,000 total job openings each year in the metro area, with 20,000 to 27,000 of those being relevant for new graduates. 

The Boston Foundation’s 2003 report contested that four out of five recent graduates who decide to leave Boston do so for avoidable reasons. Yet, attempting to retain all of these willing departures would mean accommodating over 25,000 additional people in Boston each year. For comparison, Boston’s population grew by less than 29,000 people in the decade between 2000 and 2010, a period with the most significant housing production in half a century.

The BRA-UMass analysis does not argue that Boston or the surrounding region cannot or should not try to take on additional graduates. Rather, it provides new context around the limits of retention by taking into account the labor market and two-way migration of graduates.

The researchers suggest that any future studies on the issue should consider: 1) the capacity of the labor market to absorb new graduates, not only the supply of graduates; and 2) the high share of Boston’s population of 25-34 year olds, reflecting the region’s ability to not only retain graduates but also attract them from elsewhere.

Other publications from the BRA’s Research Division are available on the agency’s website. Research requests can be made through the Research Inquiries website.