A Overlooked Factor in College Search: Metro Growth and Job Growth

College Search & Selection
41

<p>

</p>

<p>Wishful thinking on your part. Time and time again you choose to ignore the fact that billions of dollars have been invested in the state within the past couple years. Hurricanes and global warming? Please, mine as well write off the whole American coast if you are going that far. The fact is, North Carolina has remained one of the most economically healthy states throughout the recession and will remain one of the best places in the country to live and work for the foreseeable future. North Carolina is VERY well educated (four major universities within 30 miles of each other, duh) and is experiencing an exponential population boom. There is no better place in the country to live, work and do business than North Carolina, and people have realized it.</p>

<p>Most college graduates aren’t looking to find work as a tobacco farmer. For those that are looking for careers in business/technology/government etc, North Carolina is the place to be.</p>

<p>Don’t believe me? That’s fine, just ask Forbes, which rated both Charlotte and Raleigh as two of the top 10 “recession-proof” cities in the United States last year-</p>

<p><a href=“In Depth: America's Recession-Proof Cities”>In Depth: America's Recession-Proof Cities;

<p>As far as your education comment, both Raleigh (#3) and Charlotte (#12) are ranked in the top 15 most educated cities in the country-</p>

<p><a href=“http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/departments/elearning/?article=educatedcities[/url]”>http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/departments/elearning/?article=educatedcities&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>So, what about job growth? Well, according to a Chief Executive magazine survey of 543 CEO’s, North Carolina is the 2nd best state in the country for job growth and business-</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.chiefexecutive.net/ME2/Audiences/dirmod.asp?sid=&nm=&type=Publishing&mod=Publications%3A%3AArticle&mid=8F3A7027421841978F18BE895F87F791&tier=4&id=D8BB1C4F12AE46EF9B7647E09E3253A6&AudID=F242408EE36A4B18AABCEB1289960A07[/url]”>http://www.chiefexecutive.net/ME2/Audiences/dirmod.asp?sid=&nm=&type=Publishing&mod=Publications%3A%3AArticle&mid=8F3A7027421841978F18BE895F87F791&tier=4&id=D8BB1C4F12AE46EF9B7647E09E3253A6&AudID=F242408EE36A4B18AABCEB1289960A07&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>You are pretty much dead wrong about North Carlina, and the facts show it.</p>

42

<p>

</p>

<p>Worst. Logic. Ever.</p>

<p>Philadelphia is littered with major universities, like Penn, Temple, Drexel, St. Josephs, etc…and within the same 30 mile radius are dozens more, including Villanova and some of the finest LACs in the nation.</p>

<p>Yet Philadelphia is on the whole not a particularly well-educated city.</p>

<p>I for one have no interest in working in North Carolina. It’s BosWash/northeast corridor, west coast, chicago or bust for me (that is, once I get back to the United States)</p>

43

<p>

</p>

<p>Yeah, too bad its right-</p>

<p>[Most-Educated</a> Cities in the United States - MSN Encarta](<a href=“http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/departments/elearning/?article=educatedcities]Most-Educated”>http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/departments/elearning/?article=educatedcities)</p>

<p>Lets see the head-to-head…Penn, Temple, Drexel and St. Joseph’s vs. UNC, Wake Forest, Duke and NC State. Raleigh’s population is much smaller than Philadelphia’s (for the moment), so the close proximity of these universities has a greater effect on the area.</p>

44

<p>bclintonk, you are absolutely right. You want to know a state that is really booming but not necessarily on the radar? Virginia!</p>

<p>Whether it’s Northern Virginia, Shenandoah Valley, or Tidewater (Hampton Roads) area, there is a lot of potential in that state.</p>

45

<p>

</p>

<p>:D Yeah, when I was reading a post about Las Vegas and Phoenix, I was thinking that what they ARE going to run out of is water.</p>

46

<p>

</p>

<p>Do you even read threads before you post? Pretty much everything bclintonk said was absolutely wrong.</p>

47

<p>It matters little whether you got your degree in a booming city or a downturn, unless you need to work to support yourself in college. Most college graduates are relatively mobile – they can move anywhere for job prospects. A lot of them MAY stay in their metro area, if they really like it and want to. Others move away. I got my undergrad degree in Atlanta and I live in New York now, and I will likely stay in the Northeast in the next few years because I like it better here. If I did move back South, I’d likely move into Florida or North Carolina (in that Raleigh area), not back to Atlanta just because I got a degree there.</p>

<p>Graduates from the top schools – even the top publics – have degree mobility. Anywhere they want to go, their degree will be recognized. And even graduates from relatively unknown regional colleges have at least regional mobility.</p>

48

<p>I’d take all those rosy best city to blah blah blah with a big grain of salt. A few years ago they were touting Las Vegas, Phoenix etc. Then came the BUST.</p>

49

<p>Cuse0507:</p>

<p>Bachelor’s degree holders as percent of workforce:
North Carolina 30.9%, third quartile
U.S. 37.2%</p>

<p>Percent of population 25 and older with bachelor’s degree or higher:
North Carolina 22.5%, third quartile
U.S. 24.4%</p>

<p>Percent of population 25 and older with graduate/professional degree:
North Carolina 7.2%, third quartile
U.S. 8.9%</p>

<p>Percent of population 25 and older who completed high school:
North Carolina 78.1%, third quartile
U.S. 80.4%</p>

<p>Percent of 18-to-24 year-olds who completed high school:
North Carolina 84.7%, third quartile
U.S. 86.3%</p>

<p>Engineers as percent of workforce:
North Carolina 0.73%, third quartile
U.S. 0.99%</p>

<p>Employment in high-technology establishments as share of workforce:
North Carolina 7.41%, third quartile
U.S. 8.35%</p>

<p>R&D as share of gross state product:
North Carolina 1.71%, third quartile
U.S. 2.46%</p>

<p>Venture capital disbursed per $1000 of gross state product:
North Carolina $1.19, third quartile
U.S. $1.71</p>

<p>Median household income:
North Carolina $44,670, rank 37th, bottom of third quartile
U.S. $50,740</p>

<p>Median personal per capita income:
North Carolina $28,235, rank 38th, fourth quartile
U.S. $31,632</p>

<p>I acknowledge that the Research Triangle is a bright spot with strong growth prospects. The rest of the state, however, is a relatively poorly educated, low-skill, low-wage backwater. Even once-booming Charlotte has been hard hit by the collapse of its banking industry, and many doubt it will recover as Wachovia is reduced to a subsidiary of Wells Fargo. According to the Wall Street Journal, as of April unemployment in the Charlotte metro stood at 11.4%—worse than such “rustbelt” stalwarts as Dayton OH, South Bend, Grand Rapids, Akron, Chicago, Fort Wayne, Kalamazoo, Lansing, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Buffalo, Green Bay, Scranton-Wilkes-Barre, Columbus OH, Ann Arbor, Indianapolis, Allentown-Bethlehem, St. Louis, Kansas City, Minneapolis-St.Paul, Hartford, New Haven, Syracuse, New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, nd Pittsburgh, to name a few. In fact, the only top 20 metro area with a higher unemployment rate than Charlotte’s was Detroit, at 13.6%—not all that much higher, come to think of it. And some analysts think Charlotte is still on a downward spiral, with the prospect of unemployment hitting 13% or more. So much for “recession-proof.” Pure wishful thinking on Forbes’ part. They just didn’t see the banking crisis coming, or anticipate how exposed a city like Charlotte could be. </p>

<p>[Charlotte</a>, N.C., Job Woes Go Beyond Banking : NPR](<a href=“http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102340960]Charlotte”>Charlotte, N.C., Job Woes Go Beyond Banking : NPR)</p>

<p>[Charlotte</a>, N.C.'s Identity Crisis : NPR](<a href=“http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=101093611]Charlotte”>Charlotte, N.C.'s Identity Crisis : NPR)</p>

<p>[Charlotte</a>, N.C., Struggles As Big Banks Founder : NPR](<a href=“http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=96192398]Charlotte”>Charlotte, N.C., Struggles As Big Banks Founder : NPR)</p>

50

<p>

I’m not quite sure how you figure that. 10%+ unemployment?</p>

51

<p>bclintonk,</p>

<p>Charlotte is one part of the state, and it isn’t faring that poorly. The rest of the state is doing fine. Of course education levels are going to be low in the rural parts of the state, but the fact is that the major metro areas (Charlotte, Raleigh, Greensboro, Wilmington, Fayetteville) are very well educated and that is where the jobs are. You acknowledge that the research triangle area is growing, but so is the rest of the state. Fayetteville is growing exponentially with BRAC and the addition of Forces Command; it already has one of the best housing markets in the nation. Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill is a no-brainer, as is Wilmington, and Charlotte is doing fine. The fact is, most experts know the potential that North Carolina has, and your average Joe is beginning to realize it as well (hence the exponential population growth). The rural areas between Raleigh and Fayetteville, and around all of the major cities will continue to grow as more people head into the state. If you are looking to find a job, start a life, or just settle in a stable economy, North Carolina is the place to be.</p>

52

<p>

</p>

<p>Growth in the Triangle Region; major universities that create stable employment, investment by the government (BRAC) and other employers ($1 billion from Apple). There is a reason why 2 of the top 10 “recession-proof” cities are located in North Carolina, as is the fastest growing metro in the nation, the nation’s most stable housing market and the best city in the country to do business</p>

53

<p>

This still fails to explain the unemployment rate.</p>

<p>Look, like all states, North Carolina has good and bad areas. With the exception of a few states with outrageous debt (ie California), the economic health of a metro area is going to matter more for job seekers. Why else do you leap to mention RTP while dismissing the impovershed rural regions?</p>

54

<p>

</p>

<p>Sorry, 11.4% unemployment—second worst among the nation’s 20 largest metro areas, close on Detroit’s heels—isn’t “recession-proof.” You’re just whistling in the graveyard here. Forbes called Charlotte “recession-proof” BEFORE the banking crisis sent that city’s major industry into a tailspin from which it shows no signs of recovering. In other words, Forbes just didn’t see it coming. Heck, they probably predicted a continuing upward spiral in stock prices before the Crash of '29, too; that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Bank of America may yet right itself, but Wachovia, the other major Charlotte bank, was sold at fire-sale prices to Wells Fargo which is expected to slash additional thousands of jobs, stripping the strongest of Wachovia’s assets and dumping the rest, along with the tens of thousands of white-collar workers who managed them. You’ve got your head in the sand, Cuse. Or somewhere else.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>Unemployment rate, April 2009 (from Bureau of Labor Statistics):
Rocky Mount NC 13.7%
Burlington NC 12.0%
Charlotte-Gastonia-Concord NC-SC 11.4%
Greensboro-High Point NC 11.1%
Greenville NC 10.1%
Winston-Salem NC 9.7%
Wilmington NC 9.5%
Asheville, NC 9.0%
Goldsboro NC 8.7%
Fayetteville, NC 8.4%
Raleigh-Cary NC 8.3%
Durham-Chapel Hill NC 7.3%</p>

<p>At the high end, these are some of the very highest unemployment rates in the country. Even at the low end, the unemployment rate in the Research Triangle is roughly in the same range as Boston (7.2%), New York (7.6%), Philadelphia (7.6%), Hartford (7.7%), Minneapolis-St.Paul (7.8%), St. Louis (8.0%), and Indianapolis (8.2%)—in other words, the Research Triangle doing OK, but not great. Even Raleigh-Cary is among the bottom (worst) half of metropolitan statistical areas in the country in unemployment right now—in other words, its economy is performing below the national average for metropolitan regions. And that’s the BRIGHT spot in a generally bleak unemployment picture in North Carolina, one of the very worst-hit states in the nation. Sure, it will recover some, but a lot of those low-wage, low-skill manufacturing jobs are never coming back. All these predictions based on the pre-recession economy are looking pretty lame right now.</p>

55

<p>Any Sun Belt school will do if you want to take advantage of job growth hotspots. Dallas is #1 in the nation in terms of numerical growth (not a %), followed by Houston and Atlanta. There is no real dominant college when it comes to alumni in those cities. I can tell you that the DFW Metroplex is pretty much an evenly split mix of UT/A&M/OSU/OU/Ark/SMU/TCU/everything else. UT might have an edge simply because there are two UT campuses in the massive Metroplex area.</p>

<p>ONE BIG POINT: Does this really matter though? In the end Sun Belt job growth hotspots are going to be epicenters of high-paying and low-fulfilling jobs for people who have generic degrees…like a bachelor’s in business. Even though the Sun Belt will also have more of the highly fulfilling jobs than other places, those kinds of jobs are still always going to be much, much more spread out, and will never follow a direct population growth correlation. </p>

<p>

</p>

<p>What the hell is your problem if you think SMU is in the likes of UC-Riverside, U of South Florida, UNC-Charlotte, UNLV, and U of Central Florida. That’s laughable and defeats any point you were trying to prove.</p>

56

<p>

</p>

<p>Agreed. Most college-educated job seekers (except those from land-grant colleges) care much more about the health of metro areas than of tobacco farms and rural areas, which is why North Carolina remains attractive to many even though its employment rate has been above 10%. Most of the unemployment is out in the boonies, while the cities here offer tremendous opportunities for job-seekers.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>You are missing the point. First of all, the most recent projection were done earlier this year, in the midst of the economic recession. Guess what? Most experts still agree that North Carolina will lead the pack coming out of the recession. The Raleigh-Durham area is still projected to grow faster than any other metro area in the nation, still still rated as the number one city in the nation for business, and is still one of the most educated cities in the country. Fayetteville has been growing exponentially for years now and will continue to do so as BRAC sets in (generating tens of thousands of new jobs and stable paychecks to the region), Wilmington will continue to rake in tourism money, and the areas around these cities will continue to grow with the state’s population. And, Apple has already announced plans to develop a $1 billion technology center somewhere in the state. North Carolina, along with Texas, will easily leave all other states in the dust as far as economic growth is concerned once the recession slows. Most experts have already said as much.</p>

57

<p>

Exactly. Schools in the RTP area may reap the benefits of a blossoming industrial area, but so will those near all other growing metro areas.</p>

58

<p>

</p>

<p>That’s not what the BLS data say. Every metropolitan area in the state, with the sole exception of Durham-Chapel Hill, has unemployment higher than the national norm for metropolitan regions. You can hope employment comes back. But with a relatively poor, relatively poorly educated, low-skill, and heavily blue collar workforce, and an economy that is one of the most dependent on manufacturing of any in the country, I’m not so sure North Carolina’s prospects are all that bright. All those rosy projections were based in part on the expectation that Charlotte’s banking industry would continue to grow and prosper, allowing Charlotte to co-anchor North Carolina’s growth right alongside the Research Triangle. But Charlotte’s banking industry has gone belly-up, possibly permanently, and the Research Triangle isn’t big enough to lift the state’s economy all by itself. Again, I’d be careful about relying on rosy pre-recession projections. None of those forecasters saw the banking collapse coming, and Charlotte might well be the city that takes the deepest and most permanent hit for it.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>Not so. Serious people have been looking at this for a long time. In general the West Coast is expected to be less vulnerable, partly because of storm patterns (the West Coast takes almost no direct hits from tropical storms) and partly because due to its geology the West Coast land mass is actually rising, probably faster than sea-level will rise.</p>

<p>As for the East Coast, some areas are far more vulnerable than others, again due to storm patterns, geology, and topography. By all expert accounts, the most vulnerable areas include coastal Louisiana and a portion of coastal East Texas; the Florida Everglades; and the coastal Carolinas, including all the barrier islands (that would include the Outer Banks) and all the low-lying marshy mainland areas abutting the estuaries (e.g., a huge swath of land running inland from Pamlico Sound). Think about it: except on a few dunes, the Outer Banks lie about 1 meter or less above current sea level. Even a modest sea level rise would swamp them. Heck, one good direct hit from a Katrina-sized tropical storm would wash away a large part of them. They’re still a popular tourist destination, all right, but as the impending reality sinks in, especially after one or two good storms, that property will become practically worthless. I wouldn’t invest there. Not unless I thought I could make a quick buck by turning around and reselling to some heedless chump. Which of course might still be possible.</p>

<p>Take a look at EPA’s coastal vulnerability maps:</p>

<p>[Coastal</a> Zones and Sea Level Rise - Maps of Lands Vulnerable to Sea Level Rise – On the South Atlantic Coast | Climate Change - Health and Environmental Effects | U.S. EPA](<a href=“http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/effects/coastal/slrmaps_sa.html]Coastal”>http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/effects/coastal/slrmaps_sa.html)</p>

59

<p>

</p>

<p>Once again, there is more to the state than Charlotte. I think that Forbes and company know a little more about job projection than you, and all indicators point to Raleigh being the best place in the country to find work over the next decade or so. Raleigh’s population is projected to basically double; it is already the fastest growing metro area in the country, and signs indicate that will continue. Fayetteville’s continued prosperity is a guarantee (BRAC is pretty much foolproof), and Wilmington will continue to be a great tourist destination. </p>

<p>And the ‘poorly educated, blue-collar workforce’ that you refer to is actually one of the best educated populations in the country, as I have already shown. Raleigh is and will continue to be second to none (well, maybe second to Austin) as the economy rebounds over the next few years. </p>

<p>

</p>

<p>Sounds scary. When are we evacuating Manhattan? After all, that would certainly be inundated by sea-level increases. </p>

<p>

</p>

<p>Thankfully, people like you are in the minority.</p>

60

<p>

</p>

<p>Look at the data, pal. The following NC metropolitan areas are doing worse than the national median for metropolitan areas in producing and/or preserving jobs in this recession:
Rocky Mount NC 13.7% unemployment
Burlington NC 12.0%
Charlotte-Gastonia-Concord NC-SC 11.4%
Greensboro-High Point NC 11.1%
Greenville NC 10.1%
Winston-Salem NC 9.7%
Wilmington NC 9.5%
Asheville, NC 9.0%
Goldsboro NC 8.7%
Fayetteville, NC 8.4%
Raleigh-Cary NC 8.3%</p>

<p>Only Durham-Chapel Hill–i.e., HALF of the Research Triangle area—is doing better than the national norms for metropolitan areas. I agree, there’s more to the state than Charlotte. Most of the state is doing as badly, nearly as badly, or worse than Charlotte. And in the old manufacturing towns like Rocky Mount, Burlington, Greensboro-High Point, Greenville, Winston-Salem, there’s no reason to think this is merely cyclical.</p>

<p>Frankly, I don’t give a hoot what the “experts” at Forbes predicted before Charlotte’s economy collapsed. Their missing that major event is proof enough of the fallibility of their predictions. The idea that North Carolina is poised for launch into a high-income, high-growth future is just the typical ill-informed journalistic palaver. North Carolina always has been and remains today predominantly a backward, poorly educated, low-skill, low-wage state. That was appealing to manufacturing firms until they figured out they could get even lower wages in El Salvador, Malaysia, and Vietnam. The glory days are long gone. The situation is even worse in South Carolina which has no Research Triangle to bolster it, but apart from the unique economy of the Research Triangle area, the economies of the two states are substantially similar—and right now, among the worst in the country, with no obvious way out. This is one of the great under-reported stories of the current recession: the collapse of the Carolina miracle. My guess is you’ll read about it in Forbes in a year or two, as they tend to lag real world developments by roughly that much.</p>