terrapinsanity.com

What a perfect Halloween topic – the Chronicle article about interstate campus recruiting, where once again we are reminded how Maryland is a net donor to the nation’s pool of college-bound students.

That Chronicle of Higher Education site gives a nice graphic presentation, and we commend it to you. Go play with the numbers and see if you agree. What you’ll see is the ghoulish reality that other other states feast on the brains of our young … another illustration of Maryland’s long-standing brain drain.

According to that article College Park experienced a 3 percent drop in yield of new freshman from in-state in recent years, no surprise in light of aggressive leadership by the bean counters who know out-of-state tuition pays bills. Increasingly, the flagship campus brings in new freshman from elsewhere and as shown in the Chronicle reporting this is a phenomenon matched at the majority of Maryland schools. This is not matched by some big boost in objective quality measures of our student base or graduation rates – but in that point we get ahead of ourselves…

On the other graphic at the referenced site, you see what are the nation’s top recipients of out-of-state freshman, and you learn whence they come. Of the top ten states for taking new freshman from out of state, only Indiana and Illinois do not name Maryland as either the top or among the top donors of students to their programs. Add it up and you find more Maryland kids go elsewhere than attend the top several in-state institutions combined.

It gets worse. While the above situation may be desirable in some perverse way – if only we are somehow attracting the best kids and getting rid of the ‘worst’ ones by some measure, however much that statement overlooks our social mission in education – the numbers look worse when you drill down further. It takes a little work at that site, but pull the reports for schools that College Park lists as aspirational peers, especially in the mid-Atlantic. They’re pulling from Maryland in big numbers. Translation: the cream of Maryland’s high school crop increasingly by-pass the flagship to go elsewhere for college educations.

The awkward reality: our fearless leaders in Main Admin (and Mitchell, for this topic) have these data, and have known about the state brain drain for years. They know who we are losing out to, and they know (as is stated in one of the reports whose release they stonewall) the extent to which many of these students don’t come home to our state after they graduate. They know – and largely don’t care, since their reward structure is not based on bringing in the best and brightest.

They know these things, and what changes with the Chronicle data is you can start to know these things too.