Young generations aren’t staying in Kansas after graduating from college. Here’s why
Taelyr Blehm could have stayed in Kansas.
When the KU senior accepted a position as a community organizer with the DART Network — an interfaith advocacy organization focusing on social justice — she had the option to work in Kansas City, Kansas, or Lawrence. Instead, she headed to Ft. Lauderdale.
“I really appreciate some of my more rural beginnings. I spent summers on the farm, I knew the same people from preschool all the way through high school,” she said. “But I feel like the town I’m from perfectly represents the stagnation of Kansas as a state.”
Blehm, a 21-year-old Russell native, is part of a continuing and possibly increasing generational exodus, as college-age students and graduates pursue opportunities elsewhere. Young Kansans leave for a mix of reasons. Many, like Blehm, are drawn to bigger, more diverse cities. Others seek livelier social scenes, even if that means moving across the state line to Kansas City.
Kansas’ deep-red politics has also driven some to places with a more progressive outlook, especially on social issues. The state’s resistance to changes in laws covering issues such as abortion rights, Medicaid expansion, and medical marijuana have sent the young looking elsewhere to start their adult lives.
“The most frustrating thing for me being in the legislature is how often I hear ‘we’re 48th in the [country] to do this,’” said Rep. Rui Xu, D-Westwood. “I think young people especially are attracted to ambition and investment and I think that, traditionally, with the politics here, we’ve shied away from that.”
In 2016, Kansas had a net migration rate of negative 2% among college educated people under 40 — meaning more young people were moving out than in. Research by Wichita State University’s Center for Economic Development and Business Research projects the population of individuals age 20 to 29 will decrease or remain stagnant between 2020 and 2025.
Older age groups will get bigger. Between 1960 and 2010, Kansas’s median age increased by 10 years — from 26 to 36, a reflection of the aging baby boomer generation, said Jeremy Hill, the Director of the Center for Economic Development and Business Research.
Xan Wedel, who leads the Kansas State Data Center, said it also means more millennials and generation Z members are leaving.
“Our median age is going up, which would indicate that either young people are not being born or they’re leaving,” she said.
‘A really strong message’
Noah Ries, 23, a KU graduate, moved to New York City for its employment opportunities and entertainment options. But the decision wasn’t based entirely on career or culture. His job at the consulting giant Deloitte is heavily travel-based, which means he could choose to live anywhere, including Kansas.
When Ries was a junior, the Kansas Legislature passed a bill allowing religious adoption and foster care agencies to reject prospective parents on religious grounds. This means Ries, a gay man, could be denied the chance to adopt a child in Kansas.
“That type of movement, whether or not that was the intention, sends a really strong message to someone like me that maybe this isn’t, at least for now, a place where I feel the most welcome,” Ries said.
Concerns about continued outmigration of the talented young have surfaced in the Kansas Statehouse. Just before the state Senate approved a measure placing a constitutional amendment to restrict abortion on the August 2022 ballot, Sen. David Haley, D-Kansas City, appealed to colleagues through the concerns of his daughter. She goes to college in Georgia and is questioning whether she, too, will return to Kansas.
He said she described Kansas as “restrictive” and wasn’t sure she’d have the same opportunities in the state as she would elsewhere.
“I’m really anxious for you to finish school … then come back home to Kansas and bring your talents back home,” he recounted saying to her. “And she said ‘I don’t know, Dad, I’m looking at the way some of these things are going in Kansas and I don’t know I’m going to come back.’”
After the legislature approved the constitutional amendment, Gov. Laura Kelly said it was the kind of policy that kept employers away.
“We have businesses looking to Kansas and considering relocating and growing our economy,” Kelly said. “Regressive actions such as the one endorsed last night in the Senate will make companies think twice about coming here.”
Xu said one prominent issue driving young people away is the state’s resistance to legalizing marijuana.
Like Ries, Margo Hellman, 24, left for a bigger city. She moved to Los Angeles after graduation where she’s now working in the cannabis industry — an opportunity she wouldn’t have in Kansas.
Hellman originally moved to Los Angeles to work for a Jewish campus ministry, Hillel, at the University of Southern California, before becoming a dispatcher for a cannabis delivery service.
“It’s just kind of not talked about [in Kansas]. That would definitely be something that could interest me in coming back,” she said. “The cannabis space is so new and legalization opens a bunch of doors.”
Crossing state lines, not time zones
Midwestern states offer inexpensive housing and thrive on big public universities to bring in students. But the lack of job opportunities in and around college towns are why Kansas graduates leave the state at one of the nation’s highest rates, The New York Times reported.
When young Kansans move, however, it is often not far from home but to Missouri, Colorado or Texas.
Graduates are leaving Missouri at similar rates, the Times reported. But for Kansans starting out, opportunities on the other side of State Line Road just are more appealing.
As many as 23% of all people leaving Kansas move to Missouri, Wedel said. For college graduates like Elizabeth Granada, 27, living in downtown Kansas City means being closer to restaurants and entertainment venues, job opportunities and friends who also moved out of Kansas.
Granada, originally from Topeka, graduated from KU in 2016 and briefly returned home before moving to Kansas City. She said she and her boyfriend made the change because they were making the more than one-hour drive from Topeka to Kansas City so often.
“We just decided to move because of job opportunities, but also just for a lifestyle change,” she said. “I like being able to walk every day. I walk to the library or to the grocery store or just around the city, which I love, and I didn’t get that opportunity when I was in Topeka.”
She said a lot of friends who didn’t move to Kansas City stayed near where they went to college. Most didn’t return to Topeka, which she said isn’t surprising because of the limited job opportunities.
“It seems like that’s the trend,” she said.
Returning home
Abby Smith left the state after she graduated from high school and moved to Chicago, where she studies illustration at Columbia College. From a young age, she knew she wanted to leave.
What she didn’t know was her parents would also be leaving her hometown of Shawnee after her graduation. They moved to Colorado, and she said she hasn’t been back to Kansas much since then.
“I’ve honestly really missed it. That was one thing I didn’t consider,” she said. “I’ve missed it a lot more than I thought I would.”
Hellman, like Smith, says she’s homesick for Kansas. From watching the Chiefs play in the Super Bowl with her friends and family to visiting her grandparents who just got the coronavirus vaccine, there’s a lot she misses.
She said friends who are marrying and starting families have moved back to Kansas. She said while she’s not ready to “settle down,” she hasn’t ruled out coming home someday.
Even with the migration happening out of the state, Kansas still has draws for young people who grew up or are new to the state. Xu said in his district in Johnson County, there’s a large population of millennials who moved back to have children.
“Kansas has something beautiful for everybody,” he said. “I love the quality of life and everything that we have available to us here.”
He and Rep. Tory Marie Arnberger, R-Great Bend, re-formed the Kansas Future Caucus this legislative session to address issues affecting younger Kansans. He said the caucus plans to bring forward legislation to help better the lives of young people both in suburban and rural settings.
The bipartisan make up of the group means it won’t focus on hot buttons like abortion. But Arnberger said there is common ground around issues like student loan forgiveness.
“We’re educating the best of the best in Kansas, and then they’re leaving. We need them to stay in our state,” she said.
For Anika Reza, a 26-year-old law student at the University of Minnesota, Kansas is home.
After getting her undergraduate degree in Texas, she moved back to her hometown of Topeka to work on a campaign. She also did an AmeriCorps service year in Kansas City, Kansas. The experience changed her perception of the state, and now she is open to returning for the right career opportunity.
“I had the perception that, oh, there’s no place in Kansas for me to do this kind of work,” she said. “I just didn’t really have that great of an understanding of my own state ... it was just amazing to see how vibrant the community is in certain places in Kansas.”
“Kansas is one of the best places in the US,” she said.
This story was originally published February 9, 2021 at 5:00 AM.