(gophilla.com)

As I visit different cities before accepting a job offer, one location remains glaringly out of contention: Philadelphia.

It’s not that I don’t like Philadelphia. I routinely sing the city’s praises to friends and family at home (admittedly, this is easy to do when home is in Ohio). And it’s not that I refuse to consider any opportunity outside New York. I am equally willing to relocate to Boston, Chicago or almost any other major city. Unfortunately, when I think of Philly, I can’t help thinking of it as a great place to go to college, but one that I’m more than ready to move on from.

According to a 2004 study by the Knowledge Industry Partnership, 71 percent of non-native college students will also leave Philadelphia after graduation (compared to 42 percent in Boston). While a solid 86 percent of Philly locals do remain in the city, public perception of an area depends on its ability to attract outsiders.

A recent New York Times article chronicled the efforts of various cities to please twenty-somethings, a group now coveted as a replacement for retiring Baby Boomers. While Philadelphia has taken similar measures–from internships and free concert tickets to the heralded program, “Stay Invent the Future”–the city has not made much progress.

As far as Penn students are concerned, Career Services’ survey for the College class of 2005 revealed that only 71 out of 620 of respondents, or about 11 percent, stayed in Philly after graduation.

Chrissy Royer, who graduated from the College in 2003, is one of those who stayed. She speculates that many of her peers never got to know the city’s best parts. “If I could only live in University City, I wouldn’t live in Philly,” she said. “When we graduated we liked it but we didn’t love it like we do know.”

Since graduation, Chrissy has found Philadelphia so wonderful that she has at times commuted to Baltimore and DC to keep an apartment here. She suggests that other students might discover a similar affinity if they took time from their admittedly busy schedules to engage with the city.

While a lack of appropriate jobs might be one reason that students leave, it is not the main reason. Anecdotally, Chrissy could not think of a single friend who tried to look for a job in Philly and couldn’t find one. And Philadelphia jobs are probably not as scarce as some believe.

The city’s efforts to get its students to stick around should therefore be focused not on employment but on culture and lifestyle. Perhaps Philadelphia isn’t for everyone, but students who are truly integrated into the city have a much better idea of whether it might be.

I can’t say whether I’d be weighing different options if I had taken this advice. For those still unsure of where they will be after graduation though, it certainly can’t hurt to be better informed. Whether you ultimately decide to stay or not, at least give Philly a chance.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 28th, 2006 at 2:29 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.