Many in Duluth complain that not enough students stay in Duluth. The implication is that there are not enough jobs for them in Duluth and the cause is that Duluth is "business unfriendly".
One would hope that a large percentage of high school students would remain in the town in which they attended school. If many remain, it would provide some stability and continuity to the town. On the other hand, no locality has all the possible opportunities that graduating students might seek. To be in the cutting edge of many ideas, a student has to move elsewhere. How many foreign service officers can Duluth support? How many computer scientists can Duluth support? And on and on.
One cannot expect a large percentage of college students to remain in town. The reason is simple; most of them didn't grow up in Duluth and will move on for personal reasons and for the reasons above.
I saw a good illustration of this in a UMD theatre program. Of the 24 student collaborative artists in the production of "Sugar", only three are from Duluth. Thirteen are from elsewhere in Minnesota, four are from Wisconsin, three are from North Dakota, and one is from Zambia. Of these 24, fourteen are seniors. Can a metropolitan area of 100,000 people support fourteen new actors and designers in any given year? Most of them are going to go elsewhere for graduate school or to become part of a pool of actors and designers in cities across the country.
What many people don't look at is how many students do stay in their home town and quietly build businesses. Some are modest, some are large. Almost every week I read of some little success story of local people in business. These are the people who follow the zoning rules, don't ask for government subsidies, and don't demand tax breaks to even consider their projects.
The mayor of Eden Prairie said some years ago, "We didn't do anything special to attract business; we just made Eden Prairie a nice place to live." Do you think she was on to something?
