Ohio's Attempt to Retain Brightest Students

John McCarthy of the Associated Press wrote a piece the other day that made its way in to my email box and it caught my eye. Part of Ohio's economic woes stem from the exodus from Ohio of college students after graduation. John puts it this way:

While Ohio is trying to shake off its rust belt, it must compete with other states trying to attract and keep their brightest students in the science and math disciplines.

The state’s new budget includes $100 million for scholarships to students who choose to study science, technology, engineering or math at Ohio colleges. Millions more will be spent to prepare high schoolers to study those topics in college and to train teachers to instruct advanced courses in those areas.

Ohio is hardly alone.

This approach is hardly unique to Ohio as Kentucky, Arizona and North Carolina have also implemented similar programs. Our program survived Gov. "Taxin' Ted" Strickland's line-item veto pen, so I'll actually take the time to see what this is all about.

The article had this quote from Speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives Jon Husted:

Ohio’s budget includes $20 million to create academies focused on science, technology, engineering and mathematics. This should help students qualify for the college scholarships and keep them in Ohio, said House Speaker Jon Husted, a suburban Dayton Republican. An intern program that’s part of the scholarship program will allow students to get experience — and contacts — in Ohio’s research industry, which is expected to lead to in-state jobs for them, he said.

“You have to have a work force with expertise in math and science,” Husted said. “If they aren’t choosing Ohio, we’ve already lost.”

Which led me to ask the question if there were any guarantees built in to the program that would insure that those who benefited from the program actually stuck around.

Karen Tabor from Speaker Husted's office emailed this reply:

A portion of the focus in this state budget was protecting the reforms we made to revitalize Ohio’s economy and to make significant investments in higher education – which ultimately should be a major driver of our state economy.

One of the concepts behind the Choose Ohio First Scholarship Program is that if Ohio has a higher education system that is accessible, affordable and provides a stronger skill set for the jobs and careers in demand tomorrow, students will be more likely to remain in Ohio, graduate and earn a living here. The legislation does not, however, mandate that graduates remain in Ohio. Rather, it ultimately builds an attractive economic environment and helps Ohio to compete for new talent and retain the significant talent already here in the state.

While some sort of clause saying that the receipient would work in Ohio for a period of time after graduation would have been ideal, I'm not opposed to trying this program out to see if it works. A similar approach could be applied towards the state busniess climate in general, to be honest. I'm not one to advocate handouts, but the state has to do something to attract and retain businesses and a quality work force if the state is going to recover.

The unemployment rate in Ohio has been about a full point behind the national average and part of that is due to the lack of quality jobs because there isn't a large enough work force with sufficient skills in the areas that the program addresses. Ohio has a proud tradition of innovation and technology and this program appears to be one that will address some of the needs required to get us back on track.

Will it work? Time will tell...but this is yet another piece of the Ohio budget that seems to be not getting as much press as it deserves.

UPDATE: One of Ohio's more sane members of the leftysphere, Jill, has a view on what might work for retaining graduates. Of course, I think the unions ought to cough up their share...but teachers ought to be paid what they are actually worth. The good ones anyway...