Looking to stem the tide of youth out-migration, a legislative group is recommending that a “SWAT team” be created to coordinate education and economic development policies that could retain and attract young people.

According to the report issued Monday by the Presiding Officers Advisory Task Force on Creating a Future for Youth in Maine, the SWAT team would be composed of representatives from government, education, business and labor.

Members would analyze the jobs that exist now and those that will be around in 10 years, and then define the economic development and educational tools needed to support them.

Concerned that Maine’s youth exodus could have serious implications for the future, Senate President Beverly Daggett and House Speaker Patrick Colwell created the task force last August to examine why so many young people choose to leave Maine, and to come up with ways to keep young families here and attract young people from other states.

In addition to forming the SWAT team, the report also recommends legislation to create:

. A marketing campaign that highlights the opportunities available for starting businesses, and the excellence of Maine colleges and universities.

. An internship program for college students in the state’s applied technology development centers and in occupations facing labor shortages.

. A loan repayment assistance program which enables young people who have graduated from college – either in state or out of state – to receive help repaying their loans as long as they return to Maine to work.

“Those are four concrete, doable things. It’s not everything but they are very specific. And we know they are the kinds of things that are needed,” Daggett said Monday.

“We’ve got a shortcut approach when we need a laser approach,” said Colwell. “We’re just spreading money out there and hoping it works. But we’ve got to focus on what we need now and what we’re going to need in the future, and not just shoot around hoping to get a bird.”

Other recommendations include preparing all high school students in Maine for post-secondary education, reallocating additional resources toward research and development, reducing the cost of tuition in the University of Maine System, making it easier to transfer credits within and between UMS and the Maine Community College System, and providing Internet access statewide.

The solutions in the report will have long-lasting positive repercussions, Colwell predicted.

“This isn’t a study, it’s an action plan,” he said.

The task force wasn’t trying to re-create the wheel, but to “partner with what’s already out there and [determine] what we could do around the edges that would add value to what others already are doing,” said co-chair Libby Mitchell of Vassalboro, former speaker of the Maine House of Representatives.

The group asked the State Board of Education to incorporate into the Learning Results the idea that every student gets college preparatory courses. The Public Utilities Commission was asked to expand Internet service into rural Maine so high-technology jobs could be created anywhere, and the UMS board of trustees was charged with enhancing the marketing of the system.

“We didn’t want to study the problem again – it’s been studied to death – but to see what steps we could take, small though they may be, to begin to reverse the trend of young people leaving and not being able to move back,” Libby said.

The report emphasized that its aim wasn’t to discourage Maine youth from leaving the state to pursue education and other opportunities, but to “create opportunities within Maine that are attractive to youth so that they will choose to stay in Maine or to return in the future.”

The loan repayment legislation comes with a $3 million or $4 million price tag, according to Colwell, who said it would be money well spent.

“There’s no better message to kids who have done the work and earned the degrees to say, ‘We want you to return to Maine and work here, and we’ll help you do it,”‘ he said.

UMS marketing could cost around $250,000, and the internship program around $100,000 annually, he added.

After reviewing research and listening to experts during four public hearings, task force members learned that between 1980 and 2000, the state lost approximately 50,000 young adults ages 18-31.

The outflow of youth has been most pronounced in Aroostook and Piscataquis counties.

While roughly 50 percent of high school graduates in Maine attend college elsewhere, for every 10 freshmen who leave, only seven come to Maine colleges from other states.

Again and again during public hearings, task force members heard college students worry that after they graduated they wouldn’t be able to find jobs. Meanwhile, employers expressed frustration about the lack of trained graduates.

The group received thoughtful comments and suggestions from the business and education communities, as well as “tremendous input from youth,” said Colwell.

“Frankly, this is really their report,” he said. “They’ve given us their great ideas; now it’s our job to run with them and get them done.”