The elite universities of the Northeast are failing local students. That much is clear in the growing numbers of young people leaving for Southern colleges, which have spent time and money becoming more desirable to this underserved population.
Applications to the best Northeast universities far outstrip the available spots, spurring some of the best and brightest students in states such as New York and Massachusetts to study outside the region. Many of these young people will end up using their skills to drive economic growth elsewhere. This trend in higher education should concern those focused on issues such as affordable housing—the number of slots at desirable local universities is as much a bottleneck for a family’s opportunities and a region’s prosperity as the cost and availability of homes.
When it comes to displacement and people leaving the coasts for cheaper parts of the country, it’s often the less affluent and working class who are pushed out, but that’s not the case with students. Out-of-state tuition at the University of Alabama, which in 2022 had 11% of its students hail from the Northeast, is more than $33,000 per year. At the University of Tennessee, it’s $31,000. Not particularly cheap, but relative bargains for well-off families in the Northeast, where in-demand private institutions such as Columbia University and Boston College charge more than $65,000 in annual tuition.
The listed cost of attendance and the academic profile of out-of-state students at various flagship Southern universities clearly shows the market they’re after: Students who can pay an all-in cost of about $50,000 per year and have standardized tests scores around the 85th percentile of test takers nationally. That means roughly 1300 on the SAT or 30 on the ACT. These are the kinds of families and students that any part of the country would love to have more of.
The admissions model for desirable universities in the Northeast, on the other hand, is one of ever-escalating elitism. Harvard University and Columbia now have acceptance rates in the low single digits. In the next tier, schools like Boston College and Colgate University have acceptance rates in the teens, which is where many Ivy League schools were a generation ago. The number of applicants to Boston College, for example, increased by 53% between the class of 2018 and 2028, but the size of its first-year class grew only 3%. Such paltry capacity expansion means many top students who would like to stay close to home are being forced to consider other options.
Southern universities, recognizing the opportunity, have won over increasing numbers by investing in college football, amenities such as luxury dorms, and merit scholarships.
The University of Alabama and the University of Tennessee are elite on the football field, but they know they’ll never have the academic reputation of a Harvard. Their sales pitch instead is “good enough” academically, layered with what I like to call a trendy “Lululemon” lifestyle on campus. Alabama offers automatic merit scholarships to out-of-state students with a sliding scale based on GPA and test scores—a 1200 SAT score is worth $6,000 per year, and a 1420 score is worth $28,000.
It’s easy to see the appeal of all this in a world of stressed out and anxious teenagers. The number of students from the North attending public schools in the South has climbed 30% from 2018 to 2022, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Students are also being pragmatic about their future. Since two-thirds of college graduates end up working in the state they studied in, many may be choosing southern schools to get a head start in an area where they feel they can afford to build their lives.
After all, the dynamic in elite Northeastern higher education is similar to the region’s housing situation. There isn’t enough of it, and it’s too expensive—particularly in the nicest parts. It’s one reason why there was so much movement of coastal residents and wealth to Sun Belt metros during the Covid migration boom—neighborhoods with a Whole Foods or Costco were cheaper in the South than their counterparts up North.
Some $100 billion in wealth moved to the Southeast in 2020 and 2021, Bloomberg has reported, with about 60% of the outflow coming from the Northeast. Sun Belt cities have been adding millionaires at a faster pace than New York City over the past decade. Such shifts have strengthened local economies and created better opportunities for young graduates. JPMorgan Chase & Co. CEO Jamie Dimon has said that his company now has more employees in Texas than New York.
There might still be more talent and wealth in the Northeast than in the Sun Belt on a per capita basis, but that relative advantage is eroding, and the higher-ed migration is both reflective of that and suggests it will continue. This should all be very concerning to civic leaders and economic development officials in the Northeast, which has historically benefited from its reputation as a knowledge corridor with a deep pool of talent.
The Northeast is fortunate to have so many outstanding schools and ambitious students, but trends in recent years show that people are increasingly willing to take their talents elsewhere. Ultimately, if the region doesn’t create opportunities for young people to get great educations and build lives locally, other regions will be more than willing to step in.
Conor Sen is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is founder of Peachtree Creek Investments.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.