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Governor Rounds will be in town tomorrow to deliver the commencement address at Dakota State University. It will be a chance for him to wave goodbye to a big chunk of our best and brightest who are taking the good educations our tax dollars have supported and moving to Minnesota.
I chatted yesterday with one of the lucky graduates. She's excited to head back home to Sioux Falls and start her new job as an information security specialist with the Good Samaritan Society. Most of her family is here in South Dakota, and she likes living here. She wishes the rest of her classmates could be so lucky as to get good jobs in state. Most of her DSU friends, she says, are off to Minnesota.
What? I asked. Didn't they look at the cost of living or the income tax over there in the People's Republic of Minnesota?
No, she said, they just looked for jobs. In her field, information security, there just aren't the jobs to absorb the graduates we're turning out. Even Sioux Falls, that glorious center of economic development that has been advertising in the college newspapers to entice grads to move there, can't offer enough high-tech, high-knowledge jobs to keep our graduates from hopping the border.
Governor Rounds is trying to promote the high-wage, high-knowledge economy with the Homestake Mine, the new high-speed data network, and the state's own Live Dakota campaign. DSU and Madison are trying with the Center for Technoentrepreneurism. But evidently those efforts aren't enough, and our grads are voting with their feet.
We've discussed anti-intellectualism on these pages lately. Perhaps the view of intellectuals as "book-smart" elitists detached from "reality" is holding us back economically. In his latest commentary, Prairie Business editor Rick Killion says we may need a regional paradigm shift to recognize that the road to economic growth lies in the knowledge economy. Citing Economy.com, Killion says the global economy is changing to favor "high-tech, high-intelligence work forces over cheap labor, cheap land, cheap utilities, and low cost-of-living factors."
Cheap labor, cheap land, cheap utilities, low cost of living -- those sound like the pillars of South Dakota economic development efforts, yet Killion says high-tech, high-knowledge jobs will trump them all as drivers of economic growth. Our DSU graduates appear to agree -- that's why so many are going to Minnesota.
It may be tempting to say to those highly educated, highly skilled graduates who leave the state for work, "What, you don't like South Dakota enough to stay? Well, good riddance to you, you snooty eggheads!" (I'm not building a straw man -- I've heard that sentiment from commenters on teachers.) But those eggheads, those kids who've invested a lot of time and money in getting a good education here, are the ones who will drive the economic growth of the future.
Intellectual development is key to personal and social development. We also need to recognize that it is key to economic development in the 21st-century economy. If we want South Dakota to be a player in that economy -- if we want the Governor to be able to say something other than "Have fun in Minnesota!" at commencement after commencement -- we need to develop an atmosphere of genuine respect for intellectuals and the knowledge work they do. Supervising a computer network or researching economics and knowledge transfer may not look like the hard work Grandpa and Grandma did on the farm, but that knowledge work is the key to our economic survival.
F’ing USD
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So a friend of mine made this rap a few years back, and I have to tell you
I have friends over the years who went there and tell the same boring
stories, LOL.
22 hours ago
I'd have to take issue with the fact that graduates are largely leaving the state. I could easily rattle off a dozen names of people that I know that are graduating that are moving to Sioux Falls alone, including myself. I think there are a lot of high-tech businesses in Sioux Falls that are attracting grads (like http://ww.factor360.com :-) ).
ReplyDeleteThere's always a few that will head of to Brown Printing or Federated Insurance in Minnesota, but they'er certainly not a majority.
I hope every graduating class for the next decade will prove me wrong!
ReplyDeleteBut Matt -- moving to Sioux Falls? Dang! What do we need to do to keep you smart guys here in Madison?
Info Security is a specialized position, like a brain surgeon. Most small hospitals do not have a brain surgeon on staff like most businesses do not have a dedicated information security specialist on staff. It takes a larger community and a larger business before that position can be justified. South Dakota does have a few businesses that need infosec people, but your average business just needs a general sys admin with security skills.
ReplyDeleteSo a class of graduates with the MSIA degree, only a few could get absorbed in SD unless they wanted to be general sys admins.
Life is a trade off, the Twin Cities with millions of people has more positions open. But the millions of people bring with it a lot more problems.
Ideally, be the best in the class and grab those few positions in SD, then have the best of both worlds.
I strongly doubt that South Dakota will ever be an "intellectual state" on a par with such places as Massachusetts, California, or even Minnesota.
ReplyDeleteBecause I live in Lead, I'm interested in the progress of the Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory (also called DUSEL or the Sanford Lab). But I don't delude myself into thinking that it will ever become another CERN or MIT or Caltech or U of M Institute of Technology. (Might be on a par with the setup on the Mauna Loa, though, or Kitt Peak!)
I consider myself to be an "intellectual." I chose this area because the cost of living is low, the crime is low, and modern communications technologies make it possible for a writer such as myself to work from just about anywhere. I wouldn't want to go back to Minneapolis even if Minnesota got rid of its income tax!
We might as well face it: South Dakota is too sparse, too rural, too windy, and too cold to attract the sort of diverse intelligentsia you'll find in Boston, Austin, the Bay Area, or even Minneapolis.
Young people will leave this place in large numbers as they seek the beaches of L.A., the razzle-dazzle of New York, and the "sexiness" of places far away, supposedly vibrant, supposedly exciting.
In time, however, many of them will think about raising children, and they might not want to do it in a large city. Or they will see one too many drug busts or police raids, or they'll get one too many revolvers pointed at them for no reason, or they'll get generally tired of the crowding, pollution, and sanitation problems facing those "exciting" towns.
If they want to start businesses of their own, they'll balk at the taxes and red tape in those places, with the possible exception of Austin. But even there, the cost of living is rather high and the competition is ferocious, especially in the technical sector.
It is the potential returning, aging, experienced talent that we ought to be looking for, say I. We should also keep in mind that some of them will like those hurly-burly places and will stay there for life.
We are what we are, and I am proud to be a part of this state. I hope we can build on the strengths we have, and not try to turn ourselves into something we can never be -- and arguably should never be.
Stan, your point about not losing sight of what we have and trying instead to be something we aren't is well taken.
ReplyDeleteNonetheless, it never hurts to dream big. With intellects like yours at work, we won't be on a par with Minnesota -- we'll be better! :-)
And as you note, the Internet helps level the playing field. Smart people can move here, do their work for MIT or Harcourt Inc., then step out their front door and garden or go for a walk on a sunny South Dakota spring day (such days do happen!). So hey, all you intellectuals! Move here! Stay here! South Dakota is the best!
It would be a huge public service if we had or established a record of job placement locations for our grads. Perhaps a data base of location upon graduation and at intervals of five and ten years. Behind that they may be on the family or career treadmills. It would be revealing - the exodus of SD human capital. We all know the reality everytime we get in touch with former classmates or receive alumni rags - the lists of those who left runs circles around the stay behinds.
ReplyDelete