To find out how well Florida retains its college graduates, I compiled information on more than 500,000 graduates of both public and private institutions. For every person who received a degree between 1990 and 2000, I obtained their hometown city, state and ZIP code; current city, state and ZIP code; and degree year, major and level. I also analyzed data from the U.S. Department of Education and the Bureau of Labor Statistics to determine where Florida ranked in the production of key majors and degree types.

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By WILLIAM M. HARTNETT
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Florida never had a chance.

After receiving a Ph.D. in virology from the University of Florida in 1995, Dan Hassett knew choosing the right post-doctoral program would be key to his career in biomedical research.

“People who end up becoming professors at good universities, they probably post-doced at places like Harvard, Yale, Stanford or UCLA,” Hassett said.

The Scripps Research Institute was on that short list, and soon he was on his way to California.

“In Florida, people like me, after grad school, have to move away,” said Hassett, now a 39-year-old assistant professor in Scripps’ department of neuropharmacology.

Such words echo sourly in the ears of those charged with steering the state’s economy away from its reliance on tourism, retirees, agriculture and sheer population growth. Hassett is just the sort of younger, well-educated worker that cities and states across the country are fighting to attract.

But even Florida’s warm weather, miles of beaches and low tax burden can’t lure such workers if there aren’t enough jobs in their field. And with a half-billion dollars riding on Scripps’ Florida expansion, state and local officials have shown they are willing to wager enormous pots of money on economic development. Officials hope Scripps will draw a throng of biotechnology companies to Palm Beach County, creating thousands of high-paying jobs and a strong demand for graduates with advanced science degrees.

A Palm Beach Post study, however, shows that Florida’s heady economic ambitions far outstrip its educational realities.

“We made a promise that our colleges will be able to deliver the kind of product that Scripps and its spinoffs need,” said Rep. David Mealor, R-Lake Mary, chairman of the House subcommittee on higher education and a professor and vice president at the University of Central Florida. “If we fail to deliver on that promise, I don’t think we’ll have maximized the investment that we made.”

Making the sort of sweeping new investment in higher education that Mealor favors would be a monumental effort. Consider that Florida ranked . . .

• 45th among states in the number of bachelor’s and graduate degrees granted per worker by all of its colleges and universities in 2001-2002, according to the U.S. Department of Education.
• 46th in the total amount of federal science and engineering research money received per capita by its colleges and universities in 2001, according to the National Science Foundation.
• 38th in the percentage of working-age residents in 2000 who had attended at least four years of college, a slide of 19 spots from its place in 1940, according to the Census Bureau.

But perhaps the most basic challenge to building an educational foundation capable of supporting a 21st century economy is simply this: Florida distantly trails most states in the production of science, engineering and technical graduates per worker.

The relatively few scientists and engineers the state does produce are far more likely than their peers in fields such as business or teaching to leave for other parts of the country or globe, The Post’s study shows.

“Keeping these kinds of students in Florida is a priority,” said Frank Ryll, president of the Florida Chamber of Commerce. “We need more opportunities for value-added jobs, and more grads with advanced degrees to fill those jobs.”

Last October, the chamber’s research division released the final chapters of its statewide economic development plan, with a warning that Florida’s workers, schools and research capacity are “not keeping pace with the changing demands of the global economy and (are) slipping behind its competition.”

On a per capita basis among its labor force, for example, Florida in 2001-2002 ranked 49th in the number of bachelor and graduate degrees granted in physical science, which includes such fields as chemistry and physics, according to The Post’s analysis of federal data. The state also ranked 48th in both mathematics and biomedical science.

To find out what becomes of Florida’s college graduates once they enter the workforce, The Post compiled degree and address information on each of the more than 500,000 people who received a degree from selected public and private schools between 1990 and 2000.

Overall, three out of every four graduates still live in Florida.

But more than half of Florida graduates who received a master’s degree or doctorate in the physical sciences and nearly half of those with a graduate degree in the biomedical sciences have left the state.

Graduates with the most advanced degrees also are more likely to have left Florida. The majority of people who received doctoral degrees live outside of Florida, two and a half times the rate of those with just a bachelor’s degree.

Some started their careers in Florida but eventually left, lured away by professional goals the state could not meet. Others, like Hassett, were lured to Florida from other states by academics, only to be driven away once they graduated by the scarcity of opportunities in their fields.

Hassett had never even visited Florida when he was applying to graduate schools in 1990. The Pennsylvanian had done his undergraduate studies at the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy, but was impressed with the professors and quality of research at the University of Florida’s College of Pharmacy.

Now that he is firmly established in a highly specialized scientific field, Hassett “would love to come back to Florida” for a junior faculty position at one of its universities. Such jobs are rare in any state, however, and don’t often come open, Hassett said.

Top-notch private research and development positions also are rare in Florida.

Eric Chang left his home in Connecticut in the early 1990s and came to the University of Miami because, at the time, it had one of the few undergraduate biomedical engineering programs in the country.

He received a bachelor’s degree 1995, and went to work for Cordis, a Miami Lakes-based medical devices company and subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson.

In 2000, while still working for Cordis, Chang received a master’s degree in industrial engineering from UM. But by August 2003 Chang’s ambitions had outgrown what the company and others in South Florida could offer, and he moved to Bloomington, Ind., for a job with industry-leading Boston Scientific.

“I wanted to stay in research and development, and I wanted to work for a larger company in medical device design,” Chang said. “Those opportunities are very limited in South Florida.”

Chang was at least able to find a job in Florida’s biomedical industry. Robb Pagarigan, who received a bachelor’s degree in biology from Palm Beach Atlantic University in 1997, spent a year looking for such work in Florida, only to give up and move to California. Within a week, he found a job with a biotech company in San Diego.

“I would have loved to have stayed there (in Florida),” said Pagarigan, a research assistant with Scripps.

Florida has made some progress in increasing its own college-educated workforce. The number of bachelor and graduate degrees granted by the state’s four-year schools, both public and private, increased 13 percent between 1999-2000 and 2001-2002, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

But during the same period, the increase in the number of science and technical degrees was drastically outpaced by the increase in business degrees. Biomedical science degrees were up 6 percent, for example, while the number of business degrees increased 24 percent.

Despite the clamor for more science, engineering and computer graduates, Florida colleges in 2001-2002 granted nearly 10 business degrees for every one in the biological sciences, and nine for every one in computer science.

“It is incumbent upon this state to make sure we do a better job in that area,” said Mealor, the state legislator, of science and engineering education.

FLORIDA’S COLLEGE GRADUATES: HOW WE DID THE STUDY
To find out how well Florida retains its college graduates, The Palm Beach Post compiled information on more than 500,000 graduates of both public and private institutions. For every person who received a degree between 1990 and 2000, The Post obtained:

• Hometown city, state and ZIP code
• Current city, state and ZIP code
• Degree year, major and level

The Post did not collect any personally identifiable information, such as name or age. A standard federal coding system was used to group graduates from different schools into comparable majors.

Nine public and two private schools provided complete information: Florida A&M University, Florida Atlantic University, Florida International University, Florida State University, the University of Central Florida, the University of Florida, the University of North Florida, the University of South Florida, the University of West Florida, the University of Miami and Rollins College.

Florida Gulf Coast University, which opened in 1997, provided partial data, as did the Florida Institute of Technology. New College of Florida was part of USF during the study’s timeframe, and its graduates are included in the data.

Copyright 2004 Palm Beach Newspapers, Inc.
Palm Beach Post (Florida)
March 21, 2004 Sunday
FINAL EDITION
SECTION: BUSINESS, Pg. 1F
LENGTH: 1730 words