Monday, July 16, 2007

The Brain Drain: it's real

Anecdotally, it's always seemed as though Phoenix is one of those cities that exports its talent. The vast majority of my friends-- who grew up in Phoenix-- went on to opportunities in places like Washington, D.C., Portland, New York and San Francisco. Conversely, at my out-of-state graduate school, the Phoenix-based companies that recruited on campus sometimes had to cancel their interview appointments due to lack of interest. Of course, that's all just anecdotal evidence.

But here's a study that demonstrates that relative to other cities, Phoenix does a poor job of attracting (and keeping) graduates of elite colleges. Forbes.com examined the migration patterns of Class of 1997 alumni from Harvard, Princeton, Duke, Northwestern, Rice and Stanford (individuals who could probably choose to live anywhere) and determined that Phoenix was 39th out of the 40 biggest American metro areas as a destination for those individuals. That poor showing led the web site to rank Phoenix as the 27th best city overall for young professionals, behind places like Cincinnati and Pittsburgh, and well behind western competitors Denver (#10), Austin (#11), and San Diego (#19).

I would argue that one significant factor creating Phoenix's inability to attract talent is our lack of city life. While not all young professionals want true urban life, many do-- and they gravitate toward places that offer them that opportunity. By concentrating solely (until maybe the last 5-10 years) on the suburban form, Phoenix has never offered a variety of living options. Hopefully that has finally changed. This ranking is further confirmation that it should change.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Interesting. I graduated from a prestigious university in the Northeast, and one of the reasons I settled in Phoenix was, frankly, to get away from the swarm of my fellow Ivy Leaguers.

I think your observations about urban life are on target, and I would add two other explanations:

1) Phoenix has relatively few corporate headquarters for a city of its size. Most graduates of prestigious universities are likely to seek jobs at headquarters rather than at branch offices, making them less likely to come here after graduation.

2) The Phoenix economy is one of the strongest in the nation for small business startups. That's not an area that attracts graduates of prestigious universities. They're more likely to want to work for a large, brand-name company early in their careers and maybe start their own companies later in life.

Still, some of this may change in time. A lot of organizations that started in Phoenix as small companies (e.g. New Times, Apollo Group, America West) have grown to become national players. That may change the equation in the long run.

Synapse said...

I think that's partially true. Many people will locate to cities simply because there are jobs there, and Phoenix doesn't have as many national headquarters as do, say, Chicago and New York. And you could make the argument, based on what you're saying, that Los Angeles shouldn't be able to keep graduates because it has no urban core to speak of - but it does.

I think having a true urban downtown in Phoenix will help, but what would also help would be having the corporations and job market there as well. And if all those jobs are downtown, near new condominiums, restaurants, stores, and shops, so much the better.

walt said...

Picking up on Synapse's comments, the reason Phoenix has so few corporate headquarters is probably interwoven with its weak urban pulse. Sunbelt cities are much younger and have fewer of the institutional giants that define older cities. Phoenix, in particular, is nearly devoid of good private colleges, longstanding corporate endowments, and large cultural institutions. The upshot is that Phoenix looks and feels raw, as if there's not enough heft to give central Phoenix much identity.

A city like Pittsburgh loses population but has terrific cachet as a place. Strong universities and research institutions attract top talent. The city's historic building stock makes it attractive to younger, creative types, too. The city is necessarily reinventing itself as a post-industrial knowledge-industry mecca. It's ironic that Richard Florida wrote his seminal book on the creative class while in Pittsburgh, pondering the very things we're asking about Phoenix.

For the moment, Phoenix is self-selecting for people who tend to devalue cities in favor of suburban sprawl. Factors like energy and water may eventually alter this paradigm. But until Phoenix cracks the code of its own urban form, new challenges will seed in mostly infertile soil.

downtown_resident said...

Another interesting and related point is that Phoenix may even fail to retain a large number of the college graduates that are already right here in town.

I remember an East Valley Tribune article from 1-2 years ago that compared the percentage of ASU alumni that remained in Phoenix following graduation to the proportion of University of Washington grads that stayed in Seattle. If I recall correctly, about 55% of U-Dub's grads worked in Seattle versus about 26% of ASU's alums who stayed in Phoenix. This goes directly to the point all of you are making regarding the lack of major corporations in Phoenix, and probably is somewhat attributable to our lack of urban life as well. I wonder how Phoenix/ASU would stack up against other state schools located in or near urban centers like UCLA, Berkeley, Georgia or UVA.