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| Katie Anderson |
In the recent State of the State address, Governor David Paterson outlined his plans to ensure New York’s position in emerging from the national and global economic slump. He emphasized the state’s schools by citing upstate New York’s “clean tech,” information- and research-driven institutions. According to Paterson, New York holds “some of the best human capital in the world.”
The hope is that President-Elect Barack Obama’s intent to pour money into cutting edge research could jostle the upstate region out of the economic malaise that has dogged it for nearly two decades. There is a problem, however: Once the graduates of those institutions are cut loose into the work force, only an estimated one-fourth to half of them will choose to stay upstate and work at local technology firms — those which actually grow the economy. The rest will flee for greener career pastures, seeking higher pay, cosmopolitan lifestyles, lower taxes, warmer weather, or some combination of all of these things.
This so-called “brain drain” is a specter that haunts nearly every discussion of upstate economics. Higher education draws heavily on the resources of the region, and when students pull up stakes after graduation that loss is compounded. “No one is more mobile than a recent college graduate,” says Professor Rolph Pendall in a discussion with Rochester’s City magazine.
Governor Paterson was quite clear in recent statements that New York will be raising taxes in order to compensate for its huge budgetary shortfalls. This policy runs contrary to his preferred solution to the brain drain: alleviating property taxes to make New York a more desirable career destination. State taxes, already above national averages, are often cited as a major reason that qualified workers are lured elsewhere.
Beyond taxes, there is a social dimension. In the same City interview, Cornell Professor Susan Christopherson notes that young graduates are motivated by two things: Jobs and dates. To compete socially with New York City and less proximal cities, Rochester needs to transform into a youthful, active place, rather than a Rust Belt giant bemoaning its dwindling legacy.
There is nary a college student that wouldn’t want to escape from such a place, especially when they are already so proximal to what is publicized as exciting, urban environments. Pendall says, “A lot of the colleges are located in more rural areas with smaller labor markets, so once you graduate from a small-town university, if you’re going to move at all, you’re probably going to go to New York City or North Carolina or something, unless you have roots upstate ... especially if they look at the wages in Rochester or Buffalo or Syracuse and compare them to the wages that they’d be earning practically anywhere else, in any other big city in the Northeast.”
The NYS Department of Labor reports that the wages in our area are less competitive and experts point to a lack of cooperation regionally. A long-standing sense of rivalry between nearby cities and between those cities and their surrounding rural and suburban sectors has stymied any coordinated attempts to enrich the region’s economic prospects. To Pendall, this competitive edge in a time of economic distress is absurd: “Why is it so necessary for Syracuse and Rochester to compete with each other? They really are within the same economic region. The fate of Syracuse is the fate of Rochester and vice versa.”
The road to this fate starts with politics. Any reliable map of New York State politics will show a glaring blue region engulfing the New York City area, surrounded by red in the more rural parts of the state. Tackling the issues of upstate New York then becomes a difficult task, since issues concerning these areas are clustered alongside those of New York City. Upstate issues are often overlooked, a complaint which fuels a bitter form of partisanship.
Pendall cites the severity of this partisanship as “poisonous political fighting that goes on from either side.” He recalls that discussions about “smart growth” once passed without qualms in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Connecticut, all places with republican governors at the time. Yet the minute “smart growth” was mentioned by our democratic New York State governor, it was denounced as democratic. Politicians stopped dead in their tracks. “I think a lot of people upstate are really sick of the deadlock that happens, because any one of these issues, the minute it comes up, it’s a partisan issue and the only people who are talking about it happen to be the partisan politicians ... There’s something about the dynamic in New York State,” Said Pendall.
The cyclical relationship between higher education and local industry gets truncated if the alumni don’t stay to contribute to these firms that may once have been attracted to the area. As the economy worsens, firms are more likely to be uncommitted to temporary work, especially by a currently unprofessional student still in need of on-the-job training. RIT’s co-op system and culture of innovation could play a key role in attracting firms to set up in Rochester and increasing career options throughout the region as a whole. With diversified employment opportunities, Rochester might break from its historic reliance on a handful of gigantic firms (such as Xerox and Kodak), making the region more of a magnet for young professionals in search of a place to build their careers.
As Governor Paterson characterized the state’s situation as “perilous,” it is essential to look to the future that will be formed by our current policies. It seems that upstate has many of the tools needed to emerge from this crisis stronger and in a better position than ever, but to do so, the state must take action to retain the critical sector of young, qualified workers. RIT’s administration and students can do their part by living up to their promise to drive technology and innovation, but will the state do what it takes to make the most of it?
