Task force advised to boost efforts to retain state’s youth

AUGUSTA – Maine’s college-bound young people are increasingly choosing out-of-state options for higher learning and remaining in those states after graduation, according to statistical analysts who offered their findings Friday to a special legislative panel.

Members of the Advisory Task Force on Creating a Future for Youth in Maine were told the state must do more to attract out-of-state students and retain Maine’s pool of community college and university candidates if it wants to avoid a “brain drain,” to attract new industries and to provide a stable work force 20 years from now.

The panel, established by House Speaker Pat Colwell, D-Gardiner, and Maine Senate President Beverly Daggett, D-Augusta, consists of legislative and private sector members representing various age groups.

Led by Colwell and former House Speaker Elizabeth Mitchell of Vassalboro, the task force must report back to the Legislature no later than Dec. 8 and identify strategies aimed at retaining the state’s youth.

One of the possible incentives suggested to attract younger people to Maine or have them remain in the state is a student loan forgiveness program. But none of the panelists have proposed how such a program would be funded.

Speaking to the panel, Philip Trostel, associate professor at the University of Maine, cited state Department of Education projections indicating a decline in the kindergarten through 12th-grade student population of as much as 1 percent a year over the next decade.

Meanwhile, the state’s population continues to gray, leaving Maine with the dubious distinction of being the fourth-oldest by percentage of population in the country.

“None of us prefer a future where Maine becomes a retirement home for the rest of the nation,” Colwell said. “That’s why we need to focus on how to keep our young people at home, and how to attract more young families to come here.”

Trostel emphasized that businesses relying on college graduates as an integral part of the work force have strong incentives to locate near the institutions that supply those workers. Maine must do more to attract and retain those students, he said, in order to attract and retain new and existing businesses.

“Why is Silicon Valley where it is?” he asked. “There’s a substantial advantage in a high-tech sector to be located near where these people are coming from. These businesses will tell you that it’s difficult to attract workers from out of state. People don’t like to move, and businesses will probably have to pay more in order to induce them to move.”

“They’re also more likely to leave once they get here because they might decide that they miss what they were used to,” Trostel said. “Creating college graduates [in Maine] will attract the jobs for college graduates.”

Additional task force meetings are scheduled for Oct. 2 at the University of Southern Maine in Portland and Oct. 17 at Brewer High School.

Both meetings will focus on testimony from young people and their experiences in Maine and outside the state.