Whether motivated by finances, career path or desire to travel, college graduates are leaving Michigan and heading to metropolitan areas in the Midwest.
According to a study done by City Observatory, college-educated young adults between the ages of 25 and 34 are moving to neighborhoods in and around some of the largest metro areas. The most popular of these include San Francisco, Denver, New York City, Washington, D.C., Chicago and Portland, Oregon.
On average, the study said students tend to live about three miles away from these main cities.
Before February 2014, 2,525 recent MSU graduates were surveyed for the Career Services Network’s 2013 destination survey. According to the survey report, 62 percent stayed and worked in Michigan, while another 15 percent settled in other states in the Midwest and 23 percent moved outside of the Midwest. Illinois, Washington, California, Colorado and New York are among the top states recent Spartans have moved to.
“I think most students prefer (big cities) ... sometimes it’s all determined by the location of the operations facility that they will be working at,” said Eric Doerr, the associate director of employer relations at MSU’s Career Services Network. “They can work for a global company, but sometimes, often times, production facilities are built in small-town locations, and that’s where you have to go.”
For out-of-state students like education senior Sarah Mammen, future plans include moving back home. She said she will complete her year of student teaching at a school in her home state of California.
“My parents kind of want me to stay in California, but the great thing about Michigan and California certification is that you can go to most states,” Mammen said. “If I decide that I want to go to a different state, which I kind of want to, I have that option.”
When weighing location options, Doerr said most students look at the “coolness” factors that differ from Michigan’s.
“They want to have a nightlife environment, places to go out and eat that are unique, want lots of other young people around them,” he said.
Which is why graduates gravitate to metro areas.
“If you’re young, this is your chance to travel,” Mammen said. “I think there might not be something against Michigan itself as a state, but just exploring different options and finding where you really feel comfortable.”
Even if students have a desire to travel outside of Michigan while they are in college, factors including job offers, economically stable areas and proximity to family might hold them back. Regardless, Doerr said, more students from MSU stay inside the state than leave.
In the first decade at the beginning of the century, Michigan was crashing economically, resulting in the reduction of available jobs. Since 2010, the economy has been on the rise and Charles Ballard, professor and expert in economics, said this progress might influence college students to stay in the state after graduation.
“Michigan was not seen as a place for hunting for a job,” he said. “Since things bottomed out five years ago, we’ve made decent progress — our economy has grown again, the number of jobs has grown. We are well below the number of jobs we had in 2000 but at least we are growing and adding jobs.”
With projects and campaigns in place to rebound Detroit and Michigan, such as Pure Michigan, young people are becoming more open minded and looking at Michigan a upbeat place to work.
Ballard said college students generally stay in urban areas, including Detroit, Grand Rapids, Lansing, Flint, Ann Arbor, Kalamazoo and Royal Oak.
These urban areas are “especially attractive to young college graduates,” he said.
