Even John Dunn, president of Western Michigan University, had a few ‘Ah-hah!” moments as he and group of Kalamazoo business and community leaders sat through a student presentation on why Western graduates keep leaving Kalamazoo. The students were from WMU’s Communications 4800 class, which is run by Mary Cohen, who has worked with them on this project all semester.
Conducting over 500 surveys, seven focus groups, and dozens of one-on-one interviews of young people between the ages of 18 and 24, the Comm students were able to paint a picture of where students come to Western from, where they go after graduation, and why. While 75 percent of students enrolled at WMU claim to have come from cities and towns the same size as Kalamazoo or smaller, the overwhelming majority plan on heading to bigger cities after graduation, most notably Chicago. The two top factors for this desire proved to be the perception of jobs and a sense of opportunities, professionally and socially. In some of their focus groups, participants did indicate a desire to return to Kalamazoo, but only after a shot at what the ‘big city’ had to offer. Many participants valued safety as an important factor in choosing a place to live and agreed that Kalamazoo might provide a better place to raise a family than the city.
Throughout the presentation, and the discussion that followed, it became clear just how powerful perceptions can be. In the interviews and focus groups that people conducted, many participants expressed a desire to move to bigger cities because of the job opportunities, having never been to those cities. Additionally, when participants talked about moving back to the Kalamazoo area when ready to start a family, many noted that they would prefer to move to Portage or Mattawan. The reason? They believed the school systems are superior. Some of the participants saying so had not gone to Kalamazoo area schools. And all this despite the benefits of the Kalamazoo Promise!
Perceptions have quite an impact on people’s decisions. As Kalamazoo businesses are crying out for young people to stay, there are businesses in Chicago that are turning applicants away left and right. They are inundated with resumes from the influx of college grads. Some local design businesses have been forced to open branches in Chicago as they can not get enough young talent through the door, while the competition in big cities get to be choosy. It would seem that it could be as easy to find a professional job in Kalamazoo as it would be in any major city.
This begs the question: what is Kalamazoo doing to change the perception of its job market? A big portion of the Communications 4800 presentation was about, naturally, communications. When survey participants were asked where they get information about potential jobs, the top responses were friends and family, BroncoJOBS online, and online networking mediums like facebook.com and myspace.com, which could almost be grouped with friends and family. However, when the students asked several Kalamazoo businesses how they advertise for jobs, the top responses were their own personal web sites, newspapers, and recruitment sites like monster.com. There seems to be a bit of a disconnect here. Traditional mediums for advertising don’t seem to be reaching the Western Grads. While BroncoJOBS, Western’s online job search engine, is something just about any business could advertise on, the problem may be in breaking in to this online social network. If graduates are learning about jobs and creating perceptions based on personal relationships, what can Kalamazoo businesses do to form a more personal relationship with Western’s students?
This seemed to be the closing thought of the attendees of the presentation. Job fairs and recruiters are certainly one way, and a few students even mentioned business starting their own social networking pages. Politicians do it to reach the youth. There may not be a perfect answer, or there may be several answers, but it’s something that Kalamazoo businesses, and the Kalamazoo community need to consider if they want to change perceptions, and stop the out flux of Western graduates. Michigan currently tops the nation in outbound graduates, and Kalamazoo is playing its part.
Perhaps the clearest ‘Ah-hah!’ moment came right at the end, after the students had finished the presentation of their semester long research on the question of how to keep Western grad students from leaving. President Dunn asked this group of 15 or so seniors, “How many of you are planning on staying in Kalamazoo after graduation.” Three raised their hands.
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