Nobody wants to go to college in New Jersey...

Via NRO's new Higher Ed blog comes this article describing how New Jersey has one of the highest college migration rates in the country. More students leave NJ to go to college elsewhere than any other state.

I found that interesting, because I grew up in New Jersey and went to college at a small Catholic college in Maryland - and ended up staying there. The college I went to and now work at has a large chunk of our student body drawn from Jerseyans.

I'm not really sure why so many Jerseyans get out of NJ. Part of it is probably just that NJ has a general bad reputation and people want to get the chance to get away. Part of it is probably because NJ is a fairly wealthy state, so students can afford to get away. There are a few good colleges in the NJ - the other college I had to choose between when I picked my school was The College of New Jersey (formerly known as Trenton State, even though it wasn't in Trenton), and my older brother went to Drew. But when I was college-shopping, there weren't a whole lot of schools in New Jersey that appealed to me.

I'm not really sure there is much the state can do to keep college students - they already have a number of scholarship programs to encourage students to stay in state, and a few people I went to high school with took advantage. But for the most part, I think NJ students have the means to see another state and take advantage of it.

I was surprised that Maryland had a net loss as well, since there are a number of good schools here, and since I know a lot of out-of-staters both at my school and who went to other MD schools (Towson, U OF MD, ect). But many MD'ers also have the means to go to other schools. It's probably also a factor that NJ and MD are small states - there are lots of states within a day's drive of each, so you can go to school in another state and still get home in a couple hours.