Throughout Indiana the "brain drain," the migration of the educated and the trained for opportunities elsewhere, is a pressing, worrisome phenomenon.
The Indianapolis Star, in a recent study, found that the state had lost 96,000 college graduates in the past decade.
According to a 1999 study by the Fiscal Policy Institute, 36 percent of Hoosiers leave the state after graduating from college.
Other statistics from the Morley Group, a marketing and human resources firm, show that Indiana is one of the lowest-ranking states with college graduates over the age of 25.
This shortage of "intellectual capital" is potentially damaging to the growth of commerce and the workforce.
"Indiana is not well-prepared to prosper in the future," said Sara B. Cobb, the Lilly Endowment's vice president for education.
But on June 24, Lilly announced it will offer $40 million in a series of grants designed to counteract Indiana's "brain drain," namely by figuring out how to keep the state's college graduates from leaving.
Along this line, Ball State's College of Business is joining the business schools of four Indiana universities in a new entrepreneurship program, the Indiana Venture Center.
The center is designed to offer students research-based internships and immediate work experience.
"The center is coordinated and organized, therefore providing more job opportunities and keeping college graduates in the state," said Donald F. Kuratko, executive director of Ball State's entrepreneurship program and a founder of the center.
The Indiana Venture Center's and Lilly Endowment's efforts are both reactive and proactive; still, the steps they are taking toward filling the vacancies, repairing the damage and stopping the "brain drain" are important ones.
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