Virginia does a really good job of educating a workforce — for other states.
The U.S. Census Bureau has a database that tracks where college graduates wind up within one, five and 10 years after graduation. It is, admittedly, incomplete because only 30 of 50 states have supplied data. Conspicuously missing are some of our neighboring states that we often compare ourselves with: Maryland, North Carolina and Tennessee.
For our comparison purposes, those are three big omissions. Still, we can compare Virginia with 29 other states. When we do that, we find that, after five years, 19 of them have a better retention rate of their college grads than Virginia does.
The specific numbers: The database shows that since 2001, 54.9% of those who obtained bachelor’s degrees in Virginia are still in the state after five years, meaning 45.1% aren’t.
If we look at 10 years after graduation, the retention rate drops to 51%.
Of the 30 states in the database, Texas has the highest retention rate: 85.2% after five years, 84% after ten years (so either some people moved back or trends have changed over the years). Maybe that’s because Texas is so big and it’s simply harder to move out of Texas. A college graduate in El Paso can move 820 miles to Texarkana and still be in the state; if a college graduate in Virginia moved that far, they’d be several states away. That skews comparisons.
However, if we just look at the East Coast, with states of more similar size, geographically, we still find higher retention rates. In New York, it’s 79.2% after five years, 75% after ten years, although the presence of New York City probably distorts those numbers. Perhaps a better comparison is Georgia, one of our more direct competitors in the Southeast. After five years, Georgia’s retention rate is 72.2%. After a decade, it’s 68%. Ohio’s retention rate is 68% after five years, 65% after a decade.
I wish this database had more states in it, but I wish there were unicorns, too. Without having our immediate neighbors (other than West Virginia) available, it’s hard to say who we should be measuring ourselves against. Virginia’s numbers match up with Pennsylvania and South Carolina, and are better than West Virginia, so we’re not unique, but the question is whether we’re satisfied with the numbers we have. Illinois is a state with some of the highest out-migration rates in the country, but it manages to hold onto 72% of its college gradates after five years and 68% after ten years. Retirees may be leaving Illinois, but recent college graduates usually aren’t. On the other hand, Virginia isn’t Michigan, where the retention rates are 33% and 30%.
Even if this database lacks the figures on our most direct competitors, and neighbors, these numbers still raise questions that I suspect policymakers in Richmond will wonder about: Virginia taxpayers are helping to educate many of these students, so why is the state doing only a so-so job at holding on to them?
I can hear Virginia college administrators now saying one possible reason is that they’re doing such a good job of educating students that they’re in demand nationwide. They wouldn’t be wrong. Virginia has multiple colleges with national reputations. Our schools shouldn’t be faulted for being successful; we certainly don’t want them educating students who aren’t in demand in the marketplace.
That turns our inquiry in another direction: Why isn’t Virginia’s economy able to hold onto more of these graduates?
Let’s take a deeper look.
This is the face of Virginia’s migration trends
Until the most recent Census Bureau report in December, Virginia had been seeing more people move out of state than move in. Gov. Glenn Youngkin has been talking about this since before he was elected. Granted, that’s not a sexy campaign slogan, but it’s a key demographic and economic fact: Many of those moving out of state have been college graduates, so these figures shouldn’t surprise us; they’re just presented here in a more eye-opening way. Many assume that those moving out of state are retirees — snowbirds headed for warmer climes. And many are. But many are also college graduates. I’ve written about that before; to paraphrase Ronald Reagan, here I go again.
Youngkin’s point all along has been that Virginia needs a stronger economy to hold onto more of its graduates. We’re going to lose some anyway. People have a right to move, and life moves in unexpected ways. Still, as a policy matter, if Virginia is helping to pay to educate these students, we’d like to hold onto more of them to get a return on our investment. To do that, Youngkin is right: We need a stronger economy.
Some of the states with higher retention rates have bigger metro areas
Let’s set aside Texas simply because it’s just so darned big. Instead, let’s look at some of the other states with remarkably high retention rates. New York (79.2%), Massachusetts (74.6%), Georgia (72.2%) and Illinois (72.1%) are all quite different, but they all have one thing in common: Each has a major metro of global proportions — New York City, Boston, Atlanta, Chicago. All those are economic draws. Virginia can claim Washington, D.C., but, as I’ve pointed out before, Northern Virginia is now losing population. All those other metro areas have gained population. It is in Virginia’s economic interest to make sure that Northern Virginia stays economically strong, which is why President Donald Trump’s moves to reduce the federal workforce represent an economic threat to the state. It might be good for the country, but it wouldn’t be good for our part of the country.
Who is Virginia losing to other states? Engineers and artists
The Census Bureau database offers 35 subject areas, so we can search to see what types of graduates we’re keeping, and which ones we’re losing to other states. There’s not a clear pattern. Virginia has a relatively low retention rate for engineering and engineering-related fields (only 52.4% are still in the state after five years) and math majors (45.4%). However, Virginia has a high retention rate of health professions (63.3%) and computer science graduates (61.5%). That makes it hard to say Virginia has difficulty related to those with STEM degrees — science, technology, engineering and mathematics — because we do in some fields and not in others.
Virginia has a relatively high retention rate on liberal arts majors (65.3%). Is that because the Virginia marketplace needs those graduates or because they can’t find jobs elsewhere? The data can’t say. On the other hand, Virginia has relatively low retention rates of those who study visual and performing arts (50.6%), communications (48.8%) and foreign languages (43.5%) but not nearly as low as philosophy majors (29.2%). Apparently the big philosophy companies in Virginia just aren’t hiring.
Virginia now exports most of its engineering graduates
Some professions have been relatively consistent, others have not been. Engineering and engineering-related fields show up above as one of our low-retention fields, but that retention rate has been declining over time. In the early 2000s, Virginia was retaining 55.8% of those graduates after five years; now the number is down to 47.9%.
Are we graduating too many engineers? That seems unlikely, not when engineering trade journals are full of stories about a shortage of engineers. That means the more likely answer is that there are more or better engineering jobs in other states that are luring away Virginia-trained graduates.
Our most prestigious schools see most of their graduates leave the state, but there’s a reason for that
Again, some of those schools may see most of their grads leave because they are prestigious, so these figures should not be read as an indictment of the schools, although state budget-writers might wonder where they’d be better off putting their money. The census database includes specific numbers for all colleges in Virginia, but, for purposes of this category, it doesn’t seem fair to look at private schools. They attract different types of students and don’t get taxpayer support. Only 17.7% of the graduates from Washington & Lee are still in Virginia five years after graduation, but there are no state funding decisions involved there, either. There might be with state-supported schools.
We also need to keep in mind that not all state schools admit in-state students at the same rate, so a school with a higher percentage of in-state students probably has a natural advantage in having those graduates stay in Virginia than schools with a lower percentage of in-state students. Not surprisingly, the more prominent schools, the ones with more national reputations, have a lower percentage of in-state students than other schools.
Virginia’s state schools fall into three groups.
Four schools have undergraduate student bodies where the number of in-state students is in the 60% range: Virginia Military Institute (61.2%), the College of William & Mary (64.2%), Virginia Tech (65.1%), the University of Virginia (66.9%).
Three schools are in the 70% range: Virginia State (72.3%), Norfolk State (72.4%) and James Madison University (76.5%).
All the rest are in the 80% and 90% range, from George Mason University at 84.1% to Christopher Newport University at 94.4%.
Overall, the average at all of Virginia’s state schools combined is 78.6%, according to the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia.
Now let’s move onto retention.
Among Virginia’s public four-year schools, the College of William & Mary has the lowest retention rate (38.6%), just behind the University of Virginia (39.9%). Virginia Military Institute comes in at 43.5%. All the others have at least half their graduates still in state after four years. You’ll notice right away that those three schools also start with smaller percentages of in-state students.
At Virginia Tech, the figure is 51.3%, at James Madison University, 54.4%. The highest retention rate is at Longwood University (80.1%), just ahead of Old Dominion University (76.5%). Should we look at these and conclude the state should put more money into Longwood and ODU and less into William & Mary and the University of Virginia? Before we jump to that conclusion, we should consider this: Those schools begin with a higher percentage of in-state students. Also, perhaps the students attracted to Longwood and ODU are simply more interested in staying in Virginia than those who pick William & Mary and the University of Virginia. It’s easy to make the case that more state support for Longwood and ODU would help those schools serve more students who might stay in-state; it’s a lot harder to say that William & Mary and UVa are doing something wrong by educating students who have national opportunities. If we were to elevate those schools in Farmville and Norfolk to the same prestige levels as the ones in Williamsburg and Charlottesville and admitted more out-of-state students, they’d probably have similarly low retention rates then, too. I say again: The problem isn’t with the schools, it’s with the economy.
You know who has a strong retention rate, though? Here’s who:
Community college graduates have a high retention rate
This shouldn’t be a surprise, but it’s worth stating anyway: Community college graduates overwhelmingly stay in the state. Their retention rate after five years is 77.9%. Those students also tend to be older and more rooted in a community, so tend to be less mobile. These figures are for those with a two-year associate degree, but the numbers are similar for those with short-term credentials: 76.0%.
Some of the community colleges in Southwest and Southside have exceptionally high five-year retention rates: 86.9% at Southside Virginia, 84.4% at Central Virginia (in Lynchburg), 82.6% at Virginia Western (in Roanoke), 81.4% at New River, 80.8% at Blue Ridge and Paul D. Camp (in Franklin city), 79.3% at Danville — even though Danville is practically on the state line. By definition, virtually all the students at community colleges are in-state.
If Virginia wanted to make sure that it was getting a good return for its education investment, it would put more dollars into the community college system to get more adult learners back to school.
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