Why I am part of Maine’s ‘brain drain’

I love Maine. The state has been my home for all of my 27 years – barring a six-month sojourn spent camping in a van in California. I have the same sort of blind fanatical love for Maine that tea-partiers have for America. I’m pretty sure I would actually go to war for Maine (Pine Tree Militia anyone?)

But my post-graduation plan for the last two years has been to leave my home state for greener (or greyer) pastures in New York City. It’s not that I want to. But in a market where newspaper  jobs are few and far between, my best chance at landing a job in my field lies in New York, the media capital of the world.

Maine’s “brain drain” has been well-documented. A study done by USM in 2003 showed that 50,000 young people have left the state in the last two decades, and Maine currently holds the distinction of being the most aged state in the nation, according to the U.S. Census.

Opportunity Maine, an initiative passed in 2007 to stem this tide, gives tax breaks to students who graduate college in Maine to help repay their student loans if they stay in the state. Yet the exodus persists. There simply aren’t enough jobs here in fields that young people care about.

This week’s Maine Sunday Telegram featured a voter’s guide outlining each of the 12 gubernatorial candidates’ plans for the state. The consensus among the candidates: we need to create jobs (duh.)

Democrat Rosa Scarcelli said Maine should build up its agricultural industry and the article said Democrat Elizabeth Mitchell would “insist that the education systems align themselves more with the job needs in the state.” Other candidates proposed reinvesting in Maine’s flagging paper industry. But not everybody wants to be a farmer, or work in a pulp yard or wind farm. Many young people are drawn to the city precisely to avoid those kinds of jobs.

What’s missing from the debate is a rededication to the creative economy – the kind that drives Maine’s metropolitan meccas. While there may be more jobs in mussels than media and the arts, Maine needs both to attract and retain young, ambitious talent.

Chancellor Richard Pattenaude called for a reassessment of the seven colleges’ priorities to “serve the changing and evolving… needs of the people, businesses and organizations of the state” last November in his New Challenges New Directions report. For the University of Maine, that means cutting several majors and suspending others, like Latin, German, women’s studies and theater. While UMS has little choice but to pare back its academic offerings, they should remember that languages and the arts are as vital to Maine’s economy as engineering and nursing.

Universities are places to cultivate new ideas, not expensive trade schools designed to cater to area businesses. Part of any restructuring of the state’s educational infrastructure should focus on building the trade skills programs of the state’s community colleges, and focusing Maine’s university system on maintaining the wide-ranging educational fare that it was designed to offer.

For now, my path leads to New York, the only other place besides Bucksport, Maine that has always felt like home. While Maine’s charms may not include a career right now, I know I’ll be back.

This is, after all, my home.