04/07/2005

UAEDI SURVEY RESULTS: How Do University of Arkansas Graduates View Home Counties in Arkansas? by Otto Loewer, Molly Longstreth and Carolyne Garcia

University of Arkansas graduates who are from Arkansas may want to live in Arkansas after graduation, but most of them do not want to live in their home county. According to a recent survey, 44 percent of them (197 respondents) want to live in Arkansas, but of that group, more than 80 percent of respondents (163) want to live in Northwest Arkansas.

“This doesn’t mean that these students dislike their home county,” explained Otto Loewer, director of the University of Arkansas Economic Development Institute (UAEDI). “Rather, it supports what we see elsewhere in the survey – availability of jobs is the critical factor in determining where graduates will choose to live.”

Commissioned by UAEDI, the random survey identified twelve criteria deemed important by University of Arkansas students when selecting a community to live in after graduation. The survey also sought to determine how a group of seniors and graduate students viewed various Arkansas communities relative to those criteria and assess how much these students wanted to return to Arkansas at some point in their lives.

Respondents (446 seniors and masters degree students) comprised an equal proportion of males and females and 74 percent were from somewhere in Arkansas. Other respondents were from Oklahoma (4.5 percent), Missouri (3.4 percent), and Texas (2.9 percent) or 23 foreign countries (6.7 percent).

The respondents considered all of the criteria to be important. Jobs, housing, environment and cost of living topped the list. Quality of kindergarten through 12th grade education; opportunity for higher education; community tolerance; arts, cultural, and entertainment opportunities; and outdoor recreational opportunities were ranked very close to one another in importance. Overall, community social values, proximity of family, and diversity were considered the least important of the criteria.

After ranking the criteria, students were asked to evaluate northwest Arkansas (1-hour drive from Fayetteville), Fayetteville, and the student’s home county according to these criteria. Respondents used a 7-point scale, ranging from extremely poor (1) to excellent (7) for nine criteria. The scale for cost of living ranged from economical to expensive and for diversity ranged from extremely homogeneous to extremely diverse.

Survey respondents ranked the northwest Arkansas region as good to excellent on 10 of the 12 criteria. Both cost of living and diversity received neutral rankings. For the two criteria students identified as being most important in deciding where to live – jobs and quality of neighborhoods – northwest Arkansas and Fayetteville ranked “very good.”

The 256 survey respondents whose home towns were more than 1 hour’s from Fayetteville were asked to rank their home counties according to the same criteria. Predictably, students ranked their home counties highest for proximity to family and friends (6.4), but most also felt that they had a relatively low cost of living (5.8) and high quality of natural environment (5.2). On average, respondents ranked their home counties as average (4.9) for similar social values, quality of neighborhoods and housing, and quality of kindergarten through 12th grade. Community tolerance, diversity, and higher education opportunities were considered somewhat poor (3.9). Arts and culture opportunities were ranked 11 and job opportunities were ranked 12.

These results serve to reinforce the importance of job opportunities for graduates and the way they see the job situation in their home counties. These 256 respondents represented every county in Arkansas except Benton, Washington, Madison, and Carroll (northwest Arkansas region). Although it varied some, respondents outside of northwest Arkansas consistently ranked the job opportunities in their home counties as poor.

This explains why most respondents who will stay in Arkansas intend to live in northwest Arkansas (82 percent) or central Arkansas (13 percent). But it also points to a critical issue facing many Arkansas communities. While unemployment is high in many Arkansas counties, it is near the national average in most. However, respondents from those counties near the national average in unemployment also ranked job opportunities in their home counties as poor. This would seem to indicate that it is not only job availability, but the kinds of jobs that are available that matter when graduates consider where to live after graduation.

UAEDI SURVEY RESULTS: How Do University of Arkansas Graduates View Home Counties in Arkansas?