Brain drainers, brain trainers; New England is the biggest importer of college students; New Jersey is the biggest exporter

American Demographics, Feb, 1996 by Lynn Waldsmith

New England is the biggest importer of college students; New Jersey is the biggest exporter.

About one in five high school graduates makes a run for the border. These mobile young adults choose out-of-state schools for a variety of reasons, but they concentrate heavily on a few lucky states. Twenty percent of the 1.3 million first-time freshmen who attended college immediately after graduating high school in 1992 enrolled in schools outside their home state, according to the 1992 fall enrollment study from the National Center for Education Statistics.

Six of the top-ten states with the highest rates of in-migration of college freshmen who are recent high school graduates (excluding the District of Columbia) are in New England. With 258 institutions of higher learning, New England has the greatest concentration of colleges in the nation. As its farmland, forests, and other natural resources were depleted, New England developed education into one of its strongest income-generating activities, according to Thomas Mortenson, editor and publisher of Postsecondary Education Opportunity, a higher-education newsletter based in Iowa City, Iowa.

New England is the biggest higher-education importer, despite having the highest tuition rates for private and public four-year institutions. "Our regional population is small, and we have also experienced a severe decline in high school graduates," says John C. Hoy, president of the New England Board of Higher Education. "During the baby-bust era, our colleges made a considerable effort to continue attracting students from around the country and the world."

Other states have the advantage of an attractive lifestyle to lure students inside their boundaries. "We know that a certain number of students come to Colorado to ski," says Robin Zuniga, a research associate at the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education in Boulder. Idaho, another ski state, is the sixth-largest importer of college freshmen who are recent high school graduates--39 percent are from out of state.

North Carolina tops the list for net migration of recent-graduate freshmen, not counting the District of Columbia. The state imported 8,600 more students than left the state for school in 1992. The state may appeal to out-of-state students because of the stellar reputation of athletic teams at schools like Duke and the University of North Carolina, says Mortenson. Utah, which ranks eighth for net migration, attracts Mormon graduates from all over the country who want to go to Brigham Young University.

New Jersey had the biggest drain of recent-graduate freshmen in 1992--18,500 more students left the state for school than came from other states. Despite prestigious universities like Princeton and Rutgers, experts say New Jersey does not have enough colleges to serve its large urban population. The state's proximity to New York and New England also makes out-migration simple.

In Minnesota and Wisconsin, student migration is encouraged through reciprocity agreements that allow out-of-state students to pay in-state tuition. And several states, including Alaska, and Hawaii have only a handful of colleges. Wyoming has only one four-year institution.

It's wise fiscal strategy for universities to recruit out-of-state residents, says Mortenson, since they typically pay more than in-state residents. But the policy can also prove to be controversial. Recently, the University of Michigan created an uproar in its home state when it dropped a requirement that keeps the proportion of out-of-state students below 30 percent. While the best private colleges serve an increasingly global student body, many top state schools still focus on home-grown kids.

For more information, see Residence and Migration of First-Time Freshmen Enrolled in Higher Education Institutions: Fall 1992 (NCES 95-692), available from the Government Printing Office, Washington, DC 20402-9328; telephone (202) 512-1800.

RELATED ARTICLE: Freshman Migration

New England colleges draw the largest shares of out-of-state freshmen.

(top-ten states for share of enrollment of first-time freshmen who are recent high school graduates from out of state, 1992)

1 Vermont 63.8% 2 Rhode Island 61.8 3 New Hampshire 55.4 4 Delaware 51.3 5 Massachusetts 44.2 6 Idaho 38.5 7 North Dakota 37.3 8 Connecticut 37.0 9 South Dakota 35.1 10 Maine 32.7 U.S. average 20.0%

Source: National Center for Education Statistics, Washington, DC