Growing and Keeping Your Region’s College-Educated Workers (cont.)

Project co-chair Chema echoes Collegia’s own research findings: “Students are looking at much more than classrooms and dorm rooms when they choose a college. They want a place that can connect them to the people and places they care about. They want a place that will open doors to new opportunities and experiences. In short, they want to go to a great place, not just a great college or university.”

Under his leadership, COLLEGE 360º looks to be Northeast Ohio’s best bet for growing its own college-educated workforce.

Building Blocks: The 3 Es

The underlying strategy first deployed by Philadelphia’s KIP is a belief that behavior – the graduate’s decision to stay or leave – is determined by a series of personal and professional experiences during college, which are highly influenced by expectations that are formed long before they arrive on campus.

“Decisions happen long before they occur,” writes Harvard Business School professor Gerald Zaltman in his 2003 book, How Customers Think. Ninety-five percent of thinking, he argues, takes place in the unconscious mind, which “gives the orders and the conscious mind carries them out.”

With this in mind, activities are devised for each phase of the college student life cycle:

• Enroll: Attract more and better students to the region’s colleges and universities.

  Campus Visit magazines in Philadelphia, Boston and Northeast Ohio tell the compelling stories of each region, touching on everything from trip planning to internships. Corresponding Web sites ensure that the regions’ images and key messaging are being pushed nationwide, year-round.

• Engage: Improve the quality and quantity of students’ off-campus experiences.

  The Web site www.CampusPhilly.com gives students a portal for delving into all there is to see and do in the area. Cool events – and how to reach them – are catalogued on the site, while a keychain discount tag encourages students to discover the shopping and dining gems that bring the city to life.

• Employ: Connect students with local employers through internships and mentoring.

  Going above and beyond the traditional internship fair, Career Philly organizes fairs according to specific fields, such as business or performing arts, while also coordinating fairs geared exclusively toward minorities and international students. This personalization allows businesses and students to connect more directly, and with a greater chance of finding a perfect fit.

Top takeaways

Any region can learn from programs like these, while tailoring messaging and deliverables to best suit the particulars of a given place. The most successful regions will be those that can look at the initiatives of a city like Philadelphia as a guide towards a smarter approach to attracting and retaining talent. Here are seven conditions and tips that we believe will foster success:

1. Engage bold, cross-sector leadership. Harnessing the collective strengths of a region to address collective needs is a delicate balance, but essential to transition any local economy. Those around the table must also be empowered to act swiftly.

2. Be rooted in higher education, but not driven by higher education. It’s best to house the effort in the civic realm, away from campus, where the right balance between academia’s enlightened self-interest and the region’s can best be managed.

3. Ask, don’t assume. Make sure area college students have a loud and continual voice in the process. Setting up an inter-campus council that meets regularly two to three times each semester will pay tremendous dividends.

4. Integrate, don’t re-create. Take a full inventory of local activities that already exist and which may tie in nicely with the stated mission. Then, try to morph those programs and players into future plans and fundraising before creating redundancies.

5. Embrace uniqueness. Every city has a persona built up over decades, if not centuries. Vigorously fend off the natural urge to reject the past and introduce a clever new identity – it won’t work. Branding is about meaning, not marketing.

6. Align with other regional branding. Piggyback on the existing flow of messaging that other local destination marketing efforts are putting forth.

7. Choose your public face wisely. As the initiative circulates through the community, it’s critical that the key executive shopping it around has sufficient stature to position it near the top of the local priority pile.

Collegia is a Massachusetts-based consultancy that works with regional leaders to redefine the role that higher education plays in their local economies. Collegia also publishes the College Destinations Index, an annual ranking of the nation’s top locations for college. For more information, visit www.collegia.com or contact the author at thoffman@collegia.com.

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