Indiana’s Brain Drain—the problem that won’t go away

This is a reposting of the very first article I wrote for Examiner.com back in September 2009, and my direct honesty in writing about Indiana's still-continuing Brain Drain raised a slight maelstrom of concern, lest I be seen as tarnishing "images."  But I write it as I see it, no ifs, ands, or buts, the way an honest reporter should.  Slightly edited to bring it up-to-date--GF

According to the Indianapolis Star, the leading newspaper for the State of Indiana, 46.6% of Indiana’s recent college graduates leave the state annually, while the largest influx of in-migration to Indiana consists of those with less than a 10^th grade education.  Already, in a state with an economy that is still nearly 17% dominated by manufacturing, where layoffs are a major occurrence, only a third of Indiana’s workers have a high school diploma of the equivalent, and only 28% of Indiana’s workers in the prime age work group of 25-34 have college degrees.  This compares to 39% nationally.  Yet by 2025 60% of Indiana’s workforce will have to hold college degrees for the Indiana economy to stay productive. (Again from the Indianapolis Star.)

 

But right now a college graduate in Indiana is more likely to be told that she or he is “overqualified and underexperienced” and not hired, rather than hired.

 

I know that personally—for I am one of those “overqualified and underexperienced” college grads, are many of my friends and associates.  And like many of them, I work at CTB/McGraw-Hill in Indianapolis through the temp agencies Kelly Services or Dployit working the regular but strictly seasonal job of scoring the state school system standardized tests that have become de rigueur for the schools since the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act.  During the peak of the season, over 1,000 college grads are so employed—at a job which, while it requires a college degree, only pays as much as a security guard, with no benefits, and is essentially a niche job with few transferable skills.  (What we do is most akin to what is only part of a teacher’s job—grading tests and papers.)  Yet, for many of us, this is the most substantial employment we have all year round.

 

Jim Weddle, then General Manager for Kelly Services at CTB/McGraw-Hill, keenly aware of this pool of intellectual talent he had out there, has tried to shop around the list of Kelly employees scoring tests to other employers—to no avail.  Just not interested.

 

The recession has made things even worse, of course.  For example, during the 2009 test-scoring season at CTB/McGraw-Hill, from mid-March to mid-June, I saw returning to work many colleagues I hadn’t seen out there for the couple of years.  Their reason for coming back was all the same: laid off from the jobs they’d held previously, often with little prospect of being called back.

 

One such person in this situation is Jerry Hall, a lawyer eligible in Indiana to practice law, but unable to financially afford to do so.  For the last two years he’d had a steady but low-paying warehouse job that enabled him to get by, but he was laid off from that.  He was grateful that there was at least the test scoring to come back to, but had no idea of what he’d do for work when the season ended.  “I hope I can find a warehouse job that will pay me $8.00 an hour,” he said.  Right now he’s diligently looking for warehouse and other unskilled and semi-skilled work to tide him through—but Indiana had 10.7% unemployment in June 2009, considerably higher than the national average of 9.5%, so he was not optimistic.  More pointedly, even if he did have a client who would pay him for legal representation, he couldn’t afford to spend the time it takes to be an effective attorney, for his days have to be spent looking for work, and the regular 2010 test-scoring season won’t resume until mid-March, with little hope for windfall projects being available before then.

 

Ironically, Indiana employers have been importing college graduates from elsewhere to fill the few high-tech jobs available, while Indiana’s college graduates go underemployed and unemployed for “not having the right degree.”  Which defeats the very purpose of the stated official goal of educationally upgrading Indiana’s work force.  Because, for one thing, a college education goes far beyond vocational training, no matter how specialized and technical the profession one’s trained for; a real college education enhances one’s ability to think, to assess critically, to research, to expand one’s intellectual outlook, and to appreciate the arts and culture.  So, while Indianapolis, typical of other Hoosier cities in this regard, has a plethora of shopping malls and upscale restaurants, its dearth of artistic and cultural amenities is not something the truly educated person is going to find attractive.  He or she simply wants more than just shopping malls.

 

Perhaps no where is this better seen than is the latest boosterist fad being promoted to solve Indiana’s economic dilemma: replacing declining manufacturing jobs with new, highly-skilled jobs in biotech.  But Guidant, a biotech pioneer formerly in Indianapolis, left the state when it was bought by pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson, and the state has not been able to attract significant biotech investment and venture capital since that departure.  Yet, what’s increasingly become a will o’ the wisp for the quintessentially Rust Belt Indiana economy is still touted widely by Indiana’s politicians and business leaders.  This despite that biotech is fast becoming just another economic development illusion that joins those other economic development illusions promoted in the past—such as Indianapolis becoming the amateur sports capital of the nation, or a major convention and tourism site. 

 

Recently, the Indianapolis Star touted the job-creating possibilities of biotech by pointing to the alleged job opportunities created by pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly & Co., and prosthetics manufacturer Cook Instruments, both of which had been in Indiana for quite some time—they had provided 7,200 jobs.  This in a state that, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, had lost 156,000 jobs from May 2008 to May 2009!  Showing that Indiana’s weak economy hurts its workforce across the board, more than just the college-educated.

 

 

Indiana’s educational limitations, thus, are not constraints that confine just the college-educated, although that they certainly do that—Indiana’s lack of jobs and the substantial lack of education among its workers and potential workers cut everywhere.  Consider that Indianapolis Public Schools, IPS, the public school corporation for much of metropolitan Indianapolis, including its inner city, has an overall high school graduation rate of only 47%, as stated in the Indianapolis Star.  In some of the inner-city schools the rate is only 30%.  And of those who do graduate, half or more do not go on to higher education.  “We’re stuck,” said Philip Powell, Associate Professor of Business at Indiana University-Bloomington, in the Indianapolis Star.   “We’re stuck because we don’t have the knowledge base we need in the labor force.  A lot of that is because of our really mediocre primary and secondary educational system.”