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Retaining Recent College Graduates in Boston: Is There a Brain Drain?

26 points by wallflower 12y ago

Animats 12y ago
The city itself is home to 35 colleges and universities enrolling about 152,000 students. The Redevelopment Authority is complaining that, after graduating, 4 out of 5 students leave. After 20 pages, they conclude that's what's supposed to happen.
- VLM 12y ago
  The thought experiment about 2/3 of the way thru is very amusing, in a city of basically constant size over previous decades, if a significant fraction of the grads actually stayed, the population doubling rate would be just a couple decades. Another humorous way to look at it is a "large" fraction of the 150K grads are imports from across the country and around the world, so if the imports don't leave the city will obviously eventually fill up. Its a conservation of mass argument. The report carefully avoided discussing why there are no new jobs on a net basis in Boston. The government there is just a tad oppressive, the rebels of 1776 have turned into the redcoats of 2014 and all that.
  - eli_gottlieb 12y ago
    >The report carefully avoided discussing why there are no new jobs on a net basis in Boston. The government there is just a tad oppressive, the rebels of 1776 have turned into the redcoats of 2014 and all that. Blaming the MA state government requires rather a lot of justification, considering the taxation levels are on par with California and MA doesn't (yet) even make noncompete agreements unenforceable.
eli_gottlieb 12y ago
Of course there's a bloody brain drain. There's no affordable housing, and median salaries for most graduates are nowhere near commensurate with the cost of living in the Boston metro area. What do they expect, that already-indebted graduates should further impoverish ourselves for the privilege of living in a cold, dark, snobby city with a severe inferiority complex?
- TTPrograms 12y ago
  Starting Median pay in Boston: $50,500 - http://www.forbes.com/pictures/efkk45mhij/no-10-best-paying-city-boston-cambridge-quincy-mass-n-h/ http://www.forbes.com/pictures/efkk45mhij/no-10-best-paying-... Starting Median pay in San Fran: $57,200 - http://www.forbes.com/pictures/efkk45mhij/no-2-best-paying-city-san-francisco-oakland-fremont-calif/ http://www.forbes.com/pictures/efkk45mhij/no-2-best-paying-c... Average Rent in Boston (1 BR): ~$2000 - http://boston.jumpshell.com/how-to/where-to-live-in-boston/average-rent-in-boston http://boston.jumpshell.com/how-to/where-to-live-in-boston/a... Average Rent in San Fran (1 BR): $2873 - http://www.rentjungle.com/average-rent-in-san-francisco-rent-trends http://www.rentjungle.com/average-rent-in-san-francisco-rent... Rent / Salary in Boston: 0.0396 Rent / Salary in San Fran: 0.0502 "There's no affordable housing, and median salaries for most graduates are nowhere near commensurate with the cost of living in the Boston metro area." Certainly no worse than San Fran, at least. As to the rest of the comment, how has Boston hurt you?
  - kourt 12y ago
    As much as I love Boston, SF is not the only other city in the world, and both cities are extremely atypical. The graduates are likely leaving for a place where they can get a $49,500 salary and a $700 apartment. EDIT: and your percentages are wrong: try 48% of gross for BOS and 60% of gross for SF. Figure 40% for taxes and you have either very little for food, insurance, medical care, transportation, clothing, entertainment or you're already negative. Oh, and I forgot: STUDENT LOANS.
    - TTPrograms 12y ago
      They're not yearly salary to yearly rent - it's yearly salary to monthly rent. It's just to make a comparison - if you want percent of gross for rent you can multiply by 12. You can also consider that it's comparing median starting income to average 1 BR rent. One wouldn't expect just starting out that you would have an average single bedroom.
      - kourt 12y ago
jofer 12y ago
On a side note, while the visualization at the start of the paper is quite nifty, does the rotation make it annoying to read for anyone else, or is that just me? Also, from a visualization standpoint, it's an interesting and original figure, it's rather hard to interpret. I'd argue that two or three separate conventional figures showing the same thing would make the point more clearly in about the same amount of space. That having been said, it's a unique and compact way to display the data. I'm just not sure it's an effective communication tool. (Of course, I'd be rather proud of it if I'd made it...)
chrisbennet 12y ago
This is a PDF! Please note that in the title. Some of us don't want to download PDFs to our mobile devices.

26 points by wallflower 12y ago

The city itself is home to 35 colleges and universities enrolling about 152,000 students. The Redevelopment Authority is complaining that, after graduating, 4 out of 5 students leave. After 20 pages, they conclude that's what's supposed to happen.

VLM 12y ago
The thought experiment about 2/3 of the way thru is very amusing, in a city of basically constant size over previous decades, if a significant fraction of the grads actually stayed, the population doubling rate would be just a couple decades. Another humorous way to look at it is a "large" fraction of the 150K grads are imports from across the country and around the world, so if the imports don't leave the city will obviously eventually fill up. Its a conservation of mass argument. The report carefully avoided discussing why there are no new jobs on a net basis in Boston. The government there is just a tad oppressive, the rebels of 1776 have turned into the redcoats of 2014 and all that.
- eli_gottlieb 12y ago
  >The report carefully avoided discussing why there are no new jobs on a net basis in Boston. The government there is just a tad oppressive, the rebels of 1776 have turned into the redcoats of 2014 and all that. Blaming the MA state government requires rather a lot of justification, considering the taxation levels are on par with California and MA doesn't (yet) even make noncompete agreements unenforceable.

eli_gottlieb 12y ago

Of course there's a bloody brain drain. There's no affordable housing, and median salaries for most graduates are nowhere near commensurate with the cost of living in the Boston metro area. What do they expect, that already-indebted graduates should further impoverish ourselves for the privilege of living in a cold, dark, snobby city with a severe inferiority complex?

TTPrograms 12y ago
Starting Median pay in Boston: $50,500 - http://www.forbes.com/pictures/efkk45mhij/no-10-best-paying-city-boston-cambridge-quincy-mass-n-h/ http://www.forbes.com/pictures/efkk45mhij/no-10-best-paying-... Starting Median pay in San Fran: $57,200 - http://www.forbes.com/pictures/efkk45mhij/no-2-best-paying-city-san-francisco-oakland-fremont-calif/ http://www.forbes.com/pictures/efkk45mhij/no-2-best-paying-c... Average Rent in Boston (1 BR): ~$2000 - http://boston.jumpshell.com/how-to/where-to-live-in-boston/average-rent-in-boston http://boston.jumpshell.com/how-to/where-to-live-in-boston/a... Average Rent in San Fran (1 BR): $2873 - http://www.rentjungle.com/average-rent-in-san-francisco-rent-trends http://www.rentjungle.com/average-rent-in-san-francisco-rent... Rent / Salary in Boston: 0.0396 Rent / Salary in San Fran: 0.0502 "There's no affordable housing, and median salaries for most graduates are nowhere near commensurate with the cost of living in the Boston metro area." Certainly no worse than San Fran, at least. As to the rest of the comment, how has Boston hurt you?
- kourt 12y ago
  As much as I love Boston, SF is not the only other city in the world, and both cities are extremely atypical. The graduates are likely leaving for a place where they can get a $49,500 salary and a $700 apartment. EDIT: and your percentages are wrong: try 48% of gross for BOS and 60% of gross for SF. Figure 40% for taxes and you have either very little for food, insurance, medical care, transportation, clothing, entertainment or you're already negative. Oh, and I forgot: STUDENT LOANS.
  - TTPrograms 12y ago
    They're not yearly salary to yearly rent - it's yearly salary to monthly rent. It's just to make a comparison - if you want percent of gross for rent you can multiply by 12. You can also consider that it's comparing median starting income to average 1 BR rent. One wouldn't expect just starting out that you would have an average single bedroom.
    - kourt 12y ago

jofer 12y ago

On a side note, while the visualization at the start of the paper is quite nifty, does the rotation make it annoying to read for anyone else, or is that just me? Also, from a visualization standpoint, it's an interesting and original figure, it's rather hard to interpret. I'd argue that two or three separate conventional figures showing the same thing would make the point more clearly in about the same amount of space. That having been said, it's a unique and compact way to display the data. I'm just not sure it's an effective communication tool. (Of course, I'd be rather proud of it if I'd made it...)

chrisbennet 12y ago

This is a PDF! Please note that in the title. Some of us don't want to download PDFs to our mobile devices.