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Does Oklahoma have a ‘brain drain?’ Maybe the answer is in one’s own experiences.
Does Oklahoma have a brain drain? The issue is one that may prove difficult for most to address. Real social data may not provide the best answer. It may be that only our personal experiences are helpful.
I am not a native Oklahoman. I was born in Kansas, spent my earliest childhood years in my parents’ native Texas, and only moved to Oklahoma in 1953 at age 8. I graduated from Capitol Hill High School in 1963 and earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the University of Oklahoma by 1968. I then faced my first real adult challenge. There were few job opportunities in Oklahoma for college graduates.
I took the advice of family and friends and moved to Texas for my first professional job. That is how so many of us contributed to that era’s brain drain. We simply left Oklahoma for better job prospects elsewhere.
More: How can Oklahoma retain its college grads? Here’s what readers say about ‘brain drain’
I returned to Oklahoma in 1990. While I had solid employment here, the state was still an employment desert. Even United Airlines chose Indianapolis over Oklahoma City for a major service facility. Those high-paying industrial jobs went to Indiana and not Oklahoma.
The whole state social picture does seem much brighter today. People actually visit downtown on the weekends for recreational activities; the various MAPS infrastructure developments have dramatically changed the face of the entire Oklahoma City metropolitan area; and Oklahoma City is nationally seen as a dynamic and flourishing place to live. Being listed with the likes of Denver and Nashville is a welcome development in itself.
But has the state really changed all that much? Oklahoma is a state with dramatic social challenges facing many residents. Many Oklahomans feel left behind with little hope for a bright and rewarding future. Our whole sense of a worthwhile public service “safety net” is rapidly eroding. Even core governmental services like the provision of quality public education are challenged. Some elected public officials seem more focused on replacing our shared state responsibility with other forms of private and sectarian institutions.
So, does Oklahoma have a brain drain? My own personal experience suggests that the state does. We see it daily in unfilled educational teaching positions; and we see it in the selection of other state locations for high technology industrial facilities. We really see it in the recommendation many of us grandparents are making to our own college-educated grandchildren that they would be wiser to select other states for their first career-building jobs.
This is so much like what I directly faced in 1968. The public hope is that Oklahoma may truly be a “top 10” state. We may be in a select few areas like athletics. But we are not among the nation’s better educated states. And that would seem to be a core element in any brain drain.
Jerry E. Stephens is a retired federal government law librarian who resides in Edmond.
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