Philadelphia lags behind other major cities in the percentage of residents who have education beyond high school, a recent Associated Press study shows.
The cause, some say, is the flight of recent graduates of the city's colleges from the region, and Penn is no exception to the trend.
The study, which analyzed more than three decades of U.S. Census data, found that in 2004, only 25 percent of people 20 and older in the City of Brotherly Love had at least a bachelor's degree.
Though the study showed that college graduates are increasingly moving to big cities, the proportion of Philadelphia's residents who are college-educated has increased by only 7 percent since 1970.
Of the 21 cities studied, Seattle had the highest percentage of degree-holding residents in 2004, followed by San Francisco, Raleigh, N.C., Washington and Austin, Texas. Philadelphia was number 18, followed only by Detroit, Cleveland and Las Vegas.
According to Steve Wray of the Pennsylvania Economy League, a Philadelphia-area think tank, the numbers indicate that the city is unable to keep degree-holding residents in the area.
And, he added, it can also show that Philadelphia is unable to attract graduating students.
Wray said that a 2004 study of recent Philadelphia college graduates conducted by his organization showed that 64 percent of students remain in the region after graduating. About 86 percent who were from Philadelphia originally choose to remain here, but less than a third who were not from the region stayed.
Wray said that many Penn students fit into the latter category.
He added that Boston -- another city with a high number of college students -- retains 42 percent of its non-native graduates.
Yet at Penn, the number of graduating students who remain in Philadelphia is particularly low, at least in the College of Arts and Sciences.
In the 2005 career plans study conducted by Penn's Career Services, only 71 students in the College out of 620 planned on staying in Pennsylvania, with 152 going to New York.
Sixty-four percent of those who responded to the study were already employed and 24 percent were beginning graduate study.
Director of Career Services Patricia Rose said that the largest number of graduates go to New York, both because many students come from the New York metropolitan area and because of the job opportunities there, many of which are in finance.
"I think that a lot of Penn students are favorably disposed to Philadelphia. ... The problem is that the jobs they want are elsewhere," Rose said.
Mary Flannery of the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce said that recruiters -- primarily from out of town -- target Penn, and specifically the Wharton School.
"There aren't enough jobs here for the kind of top-notch students we'd like to keep here," said Ted Hershberg, director of Penn's Center for Greater Philadelphia, a body of Penn faculty that works to improve the city.
Urban Studies professor Sidney Wong added that while in a normal economy, job growth should be about 1 percent per year, in Philadelphia that figure is constantly decreasing.
But city officials are making efforts to retain and attract more college graduates.
Flannery said that the Chamber of Commerce's primary objective is to encourage regional development, which includes increasing the number of jobs and opportunities for college graduates.
She said that one big initiative is to attract businesses from outside of the region to move to Philadelphia.
There is a "pretty strong financial base here. Perhaps what we need to do is shed more light on it," she said.
