College graduates clustering in certain metro areas

[Gotta Speakup]

The New York Times has an article on line today (and I assume will be in tomorrow's paper) outlining how college graduates are increasing living in just a few metropolitan areas and how this is hurting the economies of those areas that cannot attract the college educated. The article quotes extensively from a Brookings Institute Report.

The link to the article is here: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/31/us...behind.html?hp

Do you think this is a real issue? If yes, what can be done to help the cities that aren't successfully attracting college grads?

[Blide]

Obviously lack of jobs are the biggest reason some places are losing college graduates which is definitely going to create some discrepancy between metro areas.

One thing I didn't see mentioned in the article is amenities for attracting recent graduates. There are some places that recent graduates flock to in hopes of finding jobs just because that's where they want to live. A lot of places are going to have a hard time retaining graduates if people simply don't want to live there. You could have the best pro-business climate in the country but if there's nothing to do there, people are not going to want to stay there.

I would go so far to say that many places have a hard time seeing why their particular location may be unattractive to graduates in the first place. It's like all these places trying to recreate Silicon Valley without understanding what it took to create it. A lot of cities think they have something good but it might not be so great in the grand scheme of things. This is a problem when they're having to compete with other places on a national or even international scale.