With what it calls its Brain Gain bill and similar legislation, Nebraska offers a lesson and a warning to Maine, where the Legislature continues its struggle to understand why educating its students and encouraging high-tech industry is crucial to the success of this state’s people.

Though Nebraska has an unemployment rate of 1.6 percent, it is hardly celebrating. That number has been driven down in part because the unemployed left the state for more promising environments, and the state still lacks enough of the kinds of businesses that increase the chances of there being good jobs in the future. State government and business leaders decided to do something about this. And they were willing to spend serious money in the process, according to a recent story in The New York Times.

The Cornhusker State and Maine have a similar problem: Their top students often go out of state for college but often don’t come back. Sometimes they don’t return because they want to see the wider world and sometimes — especially in Maine — they can’t return because of a lack of job opportunities.

Nebraska’s answer was create a more direct link between in-state education and its burgeoning research and development industry. It began by building the Institute of Information Sciences, Technology and Engineering to offer students high-quality, high-tech educations, with the best students not only receiving a free education but money for books, an apartment, a computer and a paid internship at one of Omaha’s new high-technology firms.

State government there kicked in $23.5 million for the new college, but more surprising was the donation from the businesses between Omaha and Lincoln. They gave $47 million to the project. They did not give for humanitarian reasons. They gave because they knew turning smart students into smart employees was a good business investment.

Gov. Ben Nelson’s Brain Gain bill has a similar goal. It would pay up to half of the undergraduate or graduate school costs for top students with one condition: The students must work in Nebraska for three years after graduation. Another bill there offers in-state tuition costs to any smart student in neighboring states or students who are from families that once lived in Nebraska. The message is simple: Nebraska is willing to spend aggressively to attract top students and to keep them.

And that is something the Maine Legislature should think about not just in terms of college scholarships but also for research and development money. As with top students, Nebraska and every other state is competing against Maine for federal research grants. If Maine does not use state dollars to leverage federal money, another state will and that state will be in a stronger position to get more money in the future.

Maine lawmakers have three or four education and research bills that aren’t nearly as ambitious as Nebraska’s and yet even these may not make it. How far behind will this state have to fall before it begins to invest in itself?