I’m back from a consulting gig at a small university in a small city located somewhere in the Midwest. Compared to other similar institutions, this university is doing okay. Enrollment seems steady, donor relations are solid, they’ve built a raft of new buildings. The university has one distinctive major that attracts many students from around the country, driving their steady enrollment.

The word I heard repeated throughout my two-day engagement was “retention.” They were not referring to freshman-sophomore retention. The university would like to retain the students they have attracted to remain in that city after they graduate.  Most graduates leave for jobs and opportunities in St Louis or Kansas City or Chicago or Minneapolis. The university and the city would like to retain more of their graduates, to keep the talent the university has invested four years developing.

My home university, Ohio State, I think is very “sticky.”  I wish I had invented this term: that a college or university is sticky when it is particularly effective at attracting talent from beyond its immediate area, and that that talent elects to stay in the area after they graduate. I can’t say for certain if Ohio State has a specific strategy for its “stickiness,” or if it is the fact we reside in Columbus, Ohio, a fast-growing and dynamic city. Or if there is a synergy between the attractiveness of Ohio State and the quantity and diversity of jobs in Columbus that explains our stickiness. Whatever the causes, the midwestern university at which I was consulting would very much like to become “stickier.”

There have been a few studies conducted to show how some regions are stickier than others. Not surprisingly, sticky areas are the result of both the specific qualities of the college and what the surrounding region offers to graduates. One study has demonstrated that “social embeddedness,” social capital, the connections students form with their peers, and engagement with campus life are all predictors of alumni retention after they graduate.

Could we devise a “stickiness index” for colleges and small cities? Such an index might consider the percentage of students drawn from outside the region, and also the percentage of graduates employed locally or who otherwise remain in the region one, three or five years after graduation. Such an index might ask: do existing jobs align with the training students have received? Does the region have an innovation ecosystem aiding graduates in forming their own enterprises? Is housing affordable? Do residents of the region enjoy a good quality of life? Does the university have any programs that assist their newly minted alumni in staying in the area? Readers of our Knowledge Towns will immediately see the relationship between the talent magnet strategy outlined in that book and the concept of stickiness.

I am devising—and continue to develop–a stickiness index we might use to assess individual colleges and universities.  I have first applied it to The Ohio State University.  According to my preliminary model, Ohio State would be a national top tier university, ranking very high on the stickiness scale. Ohio State is one of the largest universities in the country, drawing students from around the US and indeed around the world. Students are attracted to our flagship programs in myriad areas. The success of our athletic program has built a powerful brand awareness. Ohio State maintains several internship pipelines. It also helps that Columbus is one of the fastest growing metros in the country, certainly the Midwest. It boasts a highly diversified, high growth economy. Compared to the coasts, the cost of living in Columbus is less.  The city has a very high quality of life, a vibrant art scene, several walkable neighborhoods, a foodie culture. Even if they have not attended Ohio State, young professionals have been settling in Columbus for over a decade. Ohio State/Columbus rates very high in alumni retention. Again, my index needs further refinement, but this beta test would put Ohio State in the top ten nationally for stickiness.

To be sticky, to have a high stickiness rating means more than just attracting talent—thus this is more than a measure of the success of enrollment management.  There must be a deliberate strategy to incentivize newly-minted alumni to remain and thrive. That strategy should ideally be a joint effort of the college and the city.  It also means that the Office of Alumni Engagement at most universities must take on a new role: establishing programs that keep alumni local.

I then applied the stickiness index to the Midwestern university I visited.  When compared to cities of corresponding size, this college would come in at the “moderately sticky” level. It does draw a good number of out-of-state students. The city offers a very good quality of life and the cost of living is relatively low. The local economy is more diversified than one might imagine for a city of its size and location, and there are internship pipelines. The university is not yet a national draw, and the city’s population size and distance from major metros further limits their national visibility.  There are but a few high end tech and R&D roles compared to larger cities.  While I was visiting, I observed that the college and the region do not have an entrepreneurship ecosystem that would help graduates launch their own enterprises, forming new industries, making the region’s economy even more diverse. That is, there is not yet a formal cooperative framework between the university, the city, civic and business leadership that would work toward retaining talent. 

Rather than brain drain—where a region loses its highly-skilled talent—a lack of stickiness might indicate “brain leakage:” that the region had temporarily built up a talent pool, but has allowed it to seep away.

One potential benefit of the index is that it offers a roadmap for an institutional stickiness strategy. The index can identify both strengths and areas of improvement for any institution. A stickiness strategy would need to combine enrollment management, alumni engagement and regional economic development all at once. There is an obvious flywheel effect of increasing stickiness that benefits both town and gown.

Can a small college in a small town become sticky?  The answer is yes, but as one might imagine the road ahead would be very challenging.  At minimum, such a college would need to make a concerted effort to import talent nationally, to build ladders and pipelines internally, and to work deliberately with civic leaders to devise programs to incentivize alumni to stay and build their lives. 

I do not have to remind readers that many colleges and universities are facing existential challenges: declining enrollments, questions about the value of higher education, political interference, technological disruption. An institution might swim against these currents by pursuing a stickiness strategy.

David J. Staley is a higher education philosopher, strategist, futurist, theorist and designer, and is an Honorary Faculty Fellow in Innovation at CHELIP.  He is the author of The AI Symposium; Anticipatory Biographies: Personal Histories of the Future;Alternative Universities: Speculative Design for Innovation in Higher Education and the co-author of Knowledge Towns: Colleges and Universities as Talent Magnets.