From Fresno: Brain Drain Hurting Us

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Young people with good educations are leaving the struggling southern San Joaquin Valley in a search for better prospects elsewhere.

Although the Fresno metropolitan area is growing as newcomers take advantage of comparatively low housing prices, the region lost one-sixth of its young, single college graduates between 1995 and 2000, according to a U.S. Census Bureau analysis released last year.

Nationally, the only places that lost more young graduates were either dying Rust Belt cities or college towns, whose job it is to export the educated. In comparison, the Greater Los Angeles area saw that same demographic grow by almost 10%, while it jumped nearly 20% in the San Francisco Bay Area.

But it's not just young people who are leaving. A 2004 report by the Public Policy Institute of California shows that the loss of educated residents in the southern San Joaquin Valley cuts across all ages. Of the adults leaving the five-county area for other parts of California, 24% had college degrees, according to the study, but only 15% of those entering the region from elsewhere in the state had the same education level. In addition, much of region's growth comes from immigration; many of those new residents have low education levels, which intensifies the brain drain's effect.

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