That time of year again
No silly, not graduation time, it’s time for a bunch of old men and women to discuss where all our college graduates slither off to once their caps hit the ground. The T&G kicked off the ceremony today with their depressing count of just how many graduates plan to flee the area, a respectable 48%. Am I the only one who thinks its just a little funny when the same crowd who believes MySpace turns their daughters into whores (they already were), newspapers should be family oriented (your family is dysfunctional) and marijuana is a gateway drug (they learned it from watching you) tries to figure out what it is that recent college graduates want out of life?
Ok, I just turned 30 myself so I’m no expert on the wants of Americas youth, but I still get carded for cigarettes so I can fake it like a pro. First of all, old people, if you want college students to start taking you seriously, stop calling them college students. Labeling a demographic in an attempt to market to that demographic sends up the bullshit detectors like the victory flag at Iwo Jima. If that’s not the first rule of marketing, it should be. Second and finally, there is no one thing that gets our students to scurry like rats from a sinking ship, so stop looking for a magic bullet that isn’t there. It’s a few obvious big things like jobs, culture and ease in finding a Starbucks. But then there are the 4.3 million just as important but impossible to qualify details that any city worth its weight in grey matter will provide without having to think about whose bright idea they were. That’s where we really fall short. Not that we don’t have a ton of great stuff in the Big Woo, it’s just real hard to find without a guide of sorts (I’m available for private tours, but only to well screened attractive co-eds). It’s all about loose ends and we have a lot of ‘em to tie up. If you really want to have the number of recently graduated out number the recently retired in Worcester, we all need to start treating this place like a big city and lose the bullshit small town vibe that stinks the place up something awful. That’s going to take a lot more than just putting together a commission to study the cities where students actually do go.
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I was at a media conference in Cambridge a couple weeks ago, and the most amazing part to me was Eszter Hargittai’s brief talk about the Internet habits of college students. It made me realize that there is no overlap between my experience of the net and these kids’ experience. (audio)
I taught an HTML class to some Clarkies a couple weeks ago, and I mentioned the talk to one of them, pointing out that like 1% of college students have ever gone to Flickr. And the student replied: “What’s Flickr?”
I’d like to see a similar rigorous, credible study of what influences the post-graduation choices of young adults.
the outcome of such a study would be fascinating until it was outdated by the next graduating class. I would imagine the only way to really expect anything to change would be to have a leadership as media, consumerism and business savvy as the people they are trying to attract.
Dead on Melican. Everyone I graduated with has now left town for either the suburbs of Boston, or New York. Not that they wouldn’t have stayed here, but they really knew of nothing beyond the Blarney…or Lietrems on a classy night out.
It’s the small town mentality that drives away the 18-30 demographic….how many times have my friends gone out to “good” bars, and gotten looks because they aren’t visibly the “Worcester crowd.” It’s easier for your hot co-eds, Brendan…but do you think an average student from New Hampshire walking into Block 5 or Lucky Dog of Ralph’s or Victory Bar is going to feel a little odd?
As an aside…is it strange that the city councilor (Joff Smith) leading the charge on keeping college kids in town didn’t even go to school here….