Maine Youth Exodus

By Lindsey Pinkham

Andria LaRoche, a junior at Wheaton College hopes to make a career out of motivational speaking and athletics when she graduates in the spring of 2010.

She left her home in rural Skowhegan, Maine for Wheaton College in Norton hoping it would offer her more opportunity.

“There is a lot more opportunity in the Boston area than at home,” LaRoche said.
The search for better opportunity is what is sending most of Maine’s educated youth out of state and many are coming to Massachusetts.

Around 50 percent of Maine’s high school graduates are leaving the state in search of better higher education and job opportunities, according to a study by the Finance Authority of Maine and the Center for Education Policy at the University of Southern Maine.

This outpour of educated youth has provoked the theory of the “brain drain,” which could leave the state with a mass of uneducated and unskilled workers, drastically stunting the economy.

According to a study done by the University of Maine, 50,000 people aged 15-25 years have left the state over the past two decades. That’s almost a quarter of the youth population.

Brad Beauregard is a junior at the University of Maine from Skowhegan who hopes to leave the state upon graduation.

“I want to leave mostly because opportunities, in any real form, don’t exist in Maine,” Beauregard said.

In Aroostook County, Maine’s largest and most northern county, almost a third of students surveyed by the Maine Leadership Consortium in grades 6-12 believe they will need to leave the state in order to be successful.

There has been much evidence suggesting that Maine’s educated youth is leaving the state, resulting in a “brain drain.” This theory hasn’t been backed by sufficient facts but there is certainly evidence of the brain drain found in rural areas of the state.

Michelle Pinkham, an employee at Redington Fairview General Hospital in rural Skowhegan, Maine, says it’s been difficult to find qualified people to fill positions.

“A lot of these students coming out of medical school have high student loans to pay. They can’t make the money here that they could make in the bigger cities to pay off these loans and this is important while they’re thinking about starting a family,” Pinkham said.

A graduate of Skowhegan High School, Zara Saydjari, decided to leave the state and attend the University of Michigan to study pre-medicine. Her father was one of the two surgeons in the Skowhegan area for twenty years. Saydjari says she left Maine and doesn’t plan to go back after medical school.

“[The Maine] economy is weak. It’s hard for a doctor in a rural area. I plan on going to a bigger city to start my career,” Saydjari said.

A study by the Finance Authority of Maine found the youth exodus to be much less a threat than previously thought.

Although the youth exodus, especially of educated youth, is alarming to Maine citizens, the actual migration across the state is normal compared to the rest of the nation. Young people are leaving the rural areas, such as Skowhegan, at an alarming rate, but some of them are going to Maine cities like Portland and even Bangor.

The study found also that 50 percent of college graduates chose to stay in Maine, while much of the half that chose not to stay were originally from out of state. Graduates in the study said family, cultural and social ties were reasons to stay in state while opportunities, pay and benefits lured them elsewhere.

One participant reported that staying in Maine was not affordable because the high cost of paying back student loans.

The Finance Authority of Maine concluded that a plan which would persuade the graduates to stay in Maine and fill spots in the work force, resulting in a boost of Maine’s economy.

Such a plan has since been drawn out and was implemented this year. The plan took the form of a program called Opportunity Maine after it began as a citizen’s initiative before it was passed unanimously by the state legislature.

Through Opportunity Maine, Maine college graduates are eligible for a tax credit on their student loans as long as they live and work in Maine.

“The number one reason that businesses expand is the education of workers. It points you in the direction if you’re trying to develop a state’s economy,” Rob Brown, director of Opportunity Maine, said.

The program offers incentive to work in Maine after graduation which will increase the number of educated workers, a vital ingredient to expanding businesses. With a better work force comes a better economy in the long haul.

For those that leave the state to find higher paying jobs with better benefits, being able to claim an income tax credit will alleviate the burden of debt and allow them to stay in Maine.

“It means as much for the low income single mom as it does for the laid-off mill worker as it does for the high school graduate,” Brown said.