If there's one thing virtually every mayor and civic leader in America worries about, it's "brain drain," or the loss of educated residents to other cities. Yet brain drain as commonly conceived is largely a myth.
Wichita, though not without challenges, is actually gaining residents with college degrees. But it does have a lower share of young adults with degrees than average.
Brain drain worries are particularly acute in shrinking and postindustrial cities. But as I found in my recent study "Brain Drain in America's Shrinking Cities," even these places are actually experiencing brain gain.
My research examined those metropolitan areas among the 100 largest in the United States that experienced either population or job loss between 2000 and 2013. Wichita, although it has been growing in population, was on the list because it lost jobs during that time frame. Its manufacturing base, particularly in aircraft-related industries, was hit hard during the Great Recession.
Yet every single region that has been shrinking in terms of jobs and/or population is gaining residents with college degrees at double-digit rates. This includes some of the nation's toughest hard-luck cases. Metropolitan Detroit lost 160,000 people but actually gained 166,000 people with college degrees. Cleveland lost 82,000 people but gained the same amount of people with degrees.
How is this possible? Some of it is generational turnover. Older generations of people like my grandparents, who only finished sixth and eighth grades, weren't as educated as today's millennials. That doesn't mean they are dumber; they just didn't need the education to succeed economically that you do today. As the torch is passed from one generation to the next, educational attainment is rising.
Maybe these cities are also doing a much better job at retention than they are given credit for.
What's more, brain drain focuses on people who move away, like water escaping down a leaky bathtub plug. But that neglects the tap that is running at the top, namely educated people moving in and locals obtaining degrees.
As for Wichita, the metro area has added more than 31,000 people with college degrees since 2000, which is a growth rate of 35 percent during that time. It went from having about 24 percent of its adults with degrees in 2000 to 29 percent in 2013, or an increase of almost 5 percentage points in its educational attainment rate.
Attracting millennials is a focus everywhere, and looking at 25- to 34-year-olds specifically, Wichita added nearly 5,000 more with college degrees and raised its share of that age group with degrees as well.
However, the rest of America gained people with degrees during that time, too. Wichita slightly trailed the nation in its growth rate. It has also failed to keep pace in young adults with degrees. Its share of 25- to 34-year-olds with a degree is 14 percent lower than the national average — that's compared with only 6 percent lower in 2000.
So while Wichita is actually gaining brains, it is gaining them less rapidly than elsewhere.
The answer may not be more retention, however. Out of the 100 largest metro areas, Wichita is actually in the bottom half in terms of its rate of people leaving - 56th, according to IRS tax return data. But it is even lower, 72nd, for people coming in.
This suggests that rather than trying to tighten up the plug at the bottom, it's better to focus on turning up the tap at the top by producing more degrees locally and attracting more educated residents from elsewhere.
This piece originally appeared in The Wichita Eagle