Ever wonder where grads of the colleges on your list end up living after graduation? Find out! https://www.collegeconfidential.com/articles/report-most-state-university-grads-stay-dont-move-far-away/
The running joke in Madison was that you couldn’t get a job as a cab driver with a Masters. They were taken by PhDs.
I think this article is stating the obvious. A large percentage of college graduates, regardless of where they go to college, will choose to work close to home after graduation. Since the large majority of state university students go to college close to their home to begin with, they will naturally stay close to home after college.
There will be exceptions however. For example, I am fairly certain that most Cornell and Stanford grads do not end up living far from New York and California respectively after graduation. Again, that’s because close to 50% of their undergraduate student bodies from from their home state.
You’re probably right about Cornell, there are certainly zillions of alums living in and around NYC.
But you couldn’t tell from my personal cohort. My friends from there are pretty much scattered across the country. Mostly in the major cities, as the article suggests.
Maybe it’s not just related to where they grew up, but also on their chosen vocation.
(Which may also be influenced by regional considerations.)
It may also may not always be related to a desire to stay in the area. A lot of recruiting is local or regional, even at the major universities. So that’s where they are more likely to get a job.
The real wild card is the engineers. A lot of them go to big corporate engineering jobs, and a lot of those jobs (out of Cornell anyway, when I attended) are not in New York. And not all of them are in the most major cities either.
Of course the finance people do finance in NYC. The people heading to law school mostly went into “biglaw”, which is mostly in NYC but in other big cities too. Those dwelling choices have more to do with the chosen vacation than the location of their undergrad school, in many cases.
The professors are located wherever they could get Professor jobs. Several are in nice college towns that are not major cities, and not close to New York either.