One of the biggest career decisions that college students make typically comes along later than their choice of which institution or which major and profession: Should they stay in Iowa for their first professional position?
Results from a statewide survey of nearly 8,700 Iowa college students from 35 schools  conducted last fall indicate that 46 percent of them are likely to stay in Iowa after graduation, while the remainder were nearly evenly split between being likely to leave the state or being undecided. 
The findings shed light on an issue employers and state officials repeatedly bring up — the need for a skilled workforce. Iowa’s 2.8 percent unemployment rate means companies must be competitive to attract talent, like college students.
The report, “Retaining Iowa’s Talent: Post-Graduation Location & Employment Plans” conducted by Iowa Workforce Development, is the third iteration of a statewide student survey first conducted in 2008 and again in 2013. 
When compared with the statewide results from four years ago, that 46 percent of students who said they’re likely to stay in Iowa has increased by 1.5 percentage points, from 44.5 percent in the 2013 survey. However, the proportion of those likely to leave Iowa has shifted upward by a greater margin: It’s now 26.7 percent, compared with 23.4 percent in 2013. And there were fewer undecided students — 27.3 percent in the 2017 survey, compared with 32 percent in 2013. 
“As you might expect, wages are really important when people are deciding where they want to work,” said Katie Lippold, a labor market research economist with Iowa Workforce Development who co-authored the report with Dana Barrer, also a labor market research economist.  
“If you look at the importance of (wages) for those saying they were going to stay versus those who are leaving, about 80 percent of both thought it was highly important in their location decision,” she said. “When we asked about their perceptions about wages, those who were likely to leave were much less likely to say they thought Iowa had competitive wages. 
“Obviously, policy can’t be formed around that, but if employers wanted to look at keeping students around, it’s not groundbreaking news that wages and benefits are the top two things that people are looking for when they consider where they’re going.” 
Rather than try to persuade students who have decided to leave the state to stay, the low-hanging fruit may be the substantial number who are undecided. Barrer noted that the 27.3 percent of undecided students translates to approximately 66,000 young graduates, “and that’s a big pool from which companies could gain employees.”   
Among the trends revealed by the report, community college graduates with two-year degrees are more likely to stay in the state than those who are attending four-year public or private universities. More than 55 percent of those nearing graduation with an associate degree said they were likely to stay in Iowa, compared with about 42 percent of bachelor’s degree candidates. 
“That’s also true because clearly University of Iowa and Iowa State are drawing people from outside the state at a greater rate than the community colleges, so those people are perhaps more likely to return home than staying in Iowa,” Lippold said. Also, graduates of private four-year colleges are more likely to leave Iowa than community college graduates, but less likely to leave than a public university student, she noted. 
Looking at the data by occupation, students entering health care fields topped the graduates who were most likely to leave Iowa for their first position as well as those most likely to stay. 
Nearly 33 percent of the students who said they would probably move out of the state were in the “healthcare practitioner and technical” occupation. By comparison, the next two most-frequent fields to leave were “education, training & library” (14.9 percent) and “architectural/engineering” (7.6 percent).  
Similarly, health care graduates made up 36.2 percent of those students who said they were likely to stay in Iowa, followed by teachers at 19.1 percent. Business/financial graduates were the third most numerous group likely to stay, at 7.7 percent of the total.
Iowa Workforce Development has built a data visualization tool on its website that enables users to analyze the numbers on a more granular level, “so employers in different industries can really home in on what’s important to graduates trained in that field,” Lippold said. 
A key to keeping more students in Iowa after they graduate is getting them more engaged in their communities before they graduate, said Emily Shields, executive director of Iowa Campus Compact. The Des Moines-based nonprofit organization has 22 member institutions in Iowa, including all three of the regents universities, 18 private colleges and one community college. 
In reviewing the report, Shields keyed in on a list of top motivators for making a career decision, in which “personal interest” was the most frequently cited motivator at 49.9 percent. Second and third on the top 10 list of motivators was “earnings potential” (37.3 percent) and “feel it is meant to be” (35.2 percent).
“Personal interest really speaks to me about the life-purpose conversation; people are really looking for something that closely aligns with that and gives them that sense of purpose,” Shields said. “I think there’s more we can do as a state to help people see that here.” 
Iowa employers increasingly recognize the value of engaging people with a broader purpose, said Shields, who has been traveling the state for about the past six months for speaking engagements. 
“(Employers) want to find people who have that broader purpose and be able to connect to it,” she said. “But they’re not sure what to ask about (in interviews) to get to that. So that’s something we’re working on quite a bit. How can employers ask about interests, passions, volunteer experiences and draw a connection to those? And then really build workplace programs that allow people to bring those worlds together.”

Resources

Webinar – On Feb. 21, Iowa Campus Compact will conduct a webinar highlighting accomplishments of the Principal Community Scholars Program, but it will also use the forum to have a conversation about possible new directions for corporate partnerships. For more information and to register: http://iacampuscompact.org/events/ 

Access the Iowa Workforce Development report “Retaining Iowa’s Talent: Post-Graduation Location & Employment Plans”: http://bit.ly/2EsmLJ5

Access the College Student Retention Data Tool: https://www.iowaworkforcedevelopment.gov/iowa-college-student-retention