Stemming grads’ flight
Attracting students to learn in Pittsburgh is easy; persuading them to stay for work is harder
Angel Pachuda landed her dream job and her college diploma, in that order.
A lifelong Pirates fan, Ms. Pachuda interned in the ticket sales department of the Major League Baseball team as a junior. During spring break of her senior year, she got the call: She had been offered an interim sales associate position.
Ms. Pachuda, a 2017 University of Pittsburgh graduate with a bachelor’s degree in business administration, found and applied for the internship on her own because Pitt doesn’t have partnerships with local sports teams.
“With my particular field, I had to be self-motivated and I had to look for those things,” she said.
Ms. Pachuda could have taken her skills elsewhere. The region’s 61 institutions of higher education produce 40,000 graduates every year. About half leave the
area after graduation, according to the Allegheny Conference on Community Development, a nonprofit organization dedicated to economic development and quality of life in the region.
A 2016 study by the Brookings Institution, based on alumni data from LinkedIn, found that the best large U.S. metro for retaining college graduates from two- and four-year institutions is Detroit, with a retention rate of 77.7 percent. Pittsburgh ranks among the worst at 50 percent. The lowest was Phoenix, with a 36.3 percent retention rate.
Many of the Pittsburgh graduates staying in the city are going into sectors such as health care, engineering and technology. According to Pitt’s job board postings, 20 percent of open positions in a 50-mile radius of the city are in these three areas.
Pittsburgh can’t afford to lose such a significant portion of its talent pipeline, especially with a wave of baby boomer retirements on the horizon and an older-thanaverage working population. The Allegheny Conference’s 2016 Inflection Point report estimates that 1.2 million workers in the region will need to be hired or upskilled — trained in more technological-based skills to occupy open jobs — over the next decade.
Interest in interns
Local colleges and universities put a good deal of effort into attracting students not just from the region, but from different parts of the country and around the world. At Carnegie Mellon University, only 44 percent of all American students matriculating in 2016 were from the “middle states,” and nearly 50 more students were from California than from Pennsylvania.
The trick is working to persuade at least a good portion of them not to pack up the car and leave, with their alumni stickers proudly displayed on the bumper.
For several years, the University of Pittsburgh has offered a “DiscoverU Day” at orientation, during which students tour local companies and graduate programs based on their areas of interest. Students who haven’t decided on a major participate in a “Discover Pittsburgh” tour of city attractions.
Likewise, Carnegie Mellon University is working to strengthen its connections with local employers. It belongs to consortiums like the Western Pennsylvania Career Services Association, a job fair organization that holds two events each year for the region’s companies and colleges. Jennifer Holbert, the outgoing president of WestPacs, said a typical fair attracts between 150 and 180 employers, and as many as 1,200 job seekers.
According to Paula Drelick, communications manager for CMU’s career and professional development center, employers work alongside other employers to craft campus recruiting efforts for the year.
The recruiting process prioritizes internships. According to a 2015 National Association of Colleges and Employers survey, employers across the country reported converting an average of about 52 percent of their eligible interns into full-time hires. At Pitt, 83 percent of respondents to the class of 2016 post-graduation survey reported completing an internship.
Levi Wolfe, a 2015 Pitt graduate who majored in chemical and petroleum engineering, worked at the Pittsburgh office of Aecom, a multinational American engineering and infrastructure company, as part of his engineering co-op program. Now, he is a pipeline engineer for the company and just bought his first home in Squirrel Hill.
Sara Klimek, a Cincinnati native and 2017 Pitt graduate working as a registered nurse at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC, fell in love with the hospital during her undergraduate internship there. The experience working with kids, the connections she made in the unit and the affordability of the city kept her in the city.
“I really thought I was going to be able to move out to Seattle and then I just really liked the job I’m doing right now,” Ms. Klimek said.
Selling the city
Last year, the Allegheny Conference held focus groups with nearly 100 students from five different universities to get a sense of their impression of the region. The conference found that most students did not move far beyond their campus during college.
So the organization set up “employer crawls,” picking up students according to their major and busing them around the city, hoping to connect them not just to employers but also to Pittsburgh — showcasing opportunities for things like civic involvement and weekend recreation.
There was even a backlog from students and employers looking to participate, according to Linda Topoleski, Allegheny Conference’s vice president of workforce operations and programs. She said the conference will work to build more capacity into the schools themselves to conduct these tours.
The conference has a three-part strategy: elevation, retention and attraction. The plan involves getting young talent to move in and stay, as well as “elevating” many of the region’s 32,000 long-term unemployed residents by equipping them with the skills necessary to move into highwage, high skill occupations.
The “attraction” portion involves a digital marketing program targeting Northeastern cities with ideal demographics — meaning educated, mobile young people who meet the professional needs of local employers — both through online advertisements and on-the-ground visits.
The Graduate Opportunity Index, which ranks cities based on housing market data from Trulia and job market data from LinkedIn, designated Pittsburgh the top city for new graduates with a 0.85 ranking out of 1.0. Scoring is based on affordability of housing, availability of entry-level jobs and presence of other recent graduates.
According to the index, 92 percent of Pittsburgh housing can be “affordably” rented to recent graduates.
“It’s really growing, but I like the fact that it’s not growing at necessarily an astronomical pace,” Mr. Wolfe, the recent Pitt graduate, said. “I know cities recently have been pinned as the cool new city and people flock there and the city … kind of loses its wow factor. And that’s something Pittsburgh has fortunately not had happen to it yet.”
Pittsburgh’s paradox
Inevitably, many young people will move away. Cheryl Finlay, director of career planning and placement assistance at Pitt, said graduates leave for different reasons.
“We know certain majors will go elsewhere for a job,” Ms. Topoleski agreed. “You’re not studying to be a marine biologist and staying in Pittsburgh.”
Sara Levinson, a Pittsburgh native and Gettysburg College graduate, is an example. After getting her master’s in professional writing from Carnegie Mellon University, she launched herself across the country to start a career in sales at IBM in California.
She moved because her then-fiance, who works in the film industry, wanted to move to Los Angeles, and Ms. Levinson had some connections to software jobs available there.
Ms. Levinson, whose family still lives in Greensburg, said it was difficult adjusting both to a new industry and a new city. But five years in, she struggles to reconcile her Steel City pride with the life she has built on the West Coast.
“I could still see myself coming back, maybe when I want to have a family and be closer to my parents and that’s the answer I wish,” she said. “But I think life is a lot morecomplicated than that.”