Iowa – you have a problem
Iowa – you have a problem… You have a too many jobs and not enough qualified people to fill them. Right now, there’s a surplus of roughly 48,000 jobs; that number is expected to go to nearly 200,000 within six years.
This is what we commonly refer to as “The Brain Drain.”
So why is this happening? Iowa’s great. The cost of living is cheap. There’s no traffic. We have a fantastic quality of life. Thanks to a lot of people, there’s more and more to do in Des Moines every single year. We’re one of the Top 10 Cities to Live for crying out loud!!
But there’s one thing to consider… as of 2006, Iowa was rated 6th for the amount of debt that students graduate with ($22,962). It was rated 2nd for the percent of students graduating with debt (74%).
California, on the other hand, was rated 41st for the amount of debt students have ($17,270) and 42nd for the percent of students graduating with debt (47%).
Here’s the kicker: The cost of living in L.A. is 63% higher than the cost of living in Des Moines… and yet students in California are graduating with 35% less debt. Could someone explain to me how that is possible?
Iowa has a phenomenal education system… but can students continue to afford to go to college in this state?
If so… can Iowa afford to keep them here?
Let’s say you make $50,000 in Des Moines and you put 10% of your salary towards student loans ($5000/year). You could take a similar job in Chicago making $67,000 and you’d be able put an extra $1700 towards loans every year, while spending the same percentage. Or, for an extreme example, if you were living in Manhattan you’d be making the equivalent of $119,000… and putting $11,900 towards loans every year.
So why should I stay in Iowa? Oh yea… The cost of living is cheap.
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5 Responses
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I agree that the “lower cost of living” argument doesn’t work in general. And our generation is much more adverse to that type of argument anyway, as we’d rather live somewhere more interesting, or with more opportunities, than pay less for housing. Its a hard problem, smaller less populated states have to find a way to keep young people from moving away, but no one’s figured out how to do that yet.
Finally, I wonder if California’s Higher Education system gives out more scholarships. Could that explain the disparity?
Great point, Andy. Iowa is known to have a larger percentage of first-generation and rural college students in comparison with particularly, California. These students and their families are frequently financially unprepared for college expenses, so loan offers are appealing. When these students graduate with giant student loan debt, they understandably seek the higher paying out of state jobs, at least for a few years, in an attempt to make a dent in that loan debt.
@eschapp – I’m not sure what California is doing… but they’ve got to be doing something right!
@Debra – Students are consistently leaving Iowa, and that’s a huge problem our state faces. The irony is that we promote the state as having a “cheap cost of living”… which is the same reason that many students are leaving. Weird, eh?
I am curious as to how Iowa has a such a high amount of debt coming from students. I am from Chicago and it was actually cheaper for me to go to school in Iowa. Going to Drake, a private school is actually cheaper than it would be for me to go to any in-state schools in Illinois.