I recently ran across an article on Cincinnati.com describing a new policy adopted in the town of Hamilton, Ohio, that will repay up to $5,000 of a recent college graduate’s student loan debt if that graduate will move to Hamilton. Hamilton is 35 miles north of Cincinnati and has adopted this policy to improve its competitiveness with the big city in attracting young talent. I have since read that other places in the U.S. are trying similar programs.
This article was of particular interest to me since, as my colleague Dr. Don Mathews wrote last week, a consistent complaint of businesses in our area is an inability to recruit talented and dependable workers. I agree with Dr. Mathews’ sound counsel that higher wages would correct this imbalance in the labor market.
I suggest, further, that we as a region could be more creative in our efforts to attract and retain talent.
Each year, high schools in our six-county region graduate many bright and capable young men and women. In 2015, for example, according to the Georgia Department of Education, each of our counties had a high school graduation rate at or above the state average. And 60 percent of those graduates enrolled in college by fall 2016. This means over half of our young people are graduating high school and going straight to college. But, in 2017, only 20 percent of residents of our region who were over 25 years old had a college degree.
Our problem is not that we do not have access to an educated and motivated workforce, but that we do not offer sufficient incentives for those workers to settle here. Many of our brightest students go away for college, and if they return, it’s to retire.
In developing countries, this pattern of behavior has a name — brain drain. Brain drain occurs when those best suited to help lead an area out of a developmental funk instead leave to pursue greater opportunity for personal gain elsewhere.
So, how do we reverse our local brain drain?
First, as Dr. Mathews wrote, local employers absolutely must offer wages worth working for. Second, I think an offer like that of Hamilton, Ohio, could be a simple, fairly inexpensive way to convince educated young people to settle in Southeast Georgia.
I know from personal experience that student loan debt cuts significantly into a new graduate’s take-home pay for several years and makes an otherwise attractive wage offer infeasible. Helping these individuals pay toward their loans is a short-term commitment on the part of the community or employer but could have significant long-term advantages if it encourages educated young men and women to live, work, and raise families in our region.
The Georgia Board for Physician Workforce has offered a similar loan repayment plan to physicians who practice in underserved areas of Georgia, and the board reports great success under the program. In 2016, 53 percent of graduates from Georgia’s medical schools reported they had intentions of practicing in underserved areas.
If it works for recruiting doctors, who have some of the largest student loan balances, I think it’s an interesting idea for recruiting educated workers in other fields as well. Hamilton may be onto something.
Dr. Melissa Trussell is a professor in the School of Business and Public Management at College of Coastal Georgia and works with the college’s Reg Murphy Center for Economic and Policy Studies. Contact her at mtrussell@ccga.edu.
Reg Murphy Center