The Practical Economics and Brain Drain

The term, brain drain, however, have been casually used to describe any number of skilled or well trained people migrated out of a region these days without disastrous qualifiers.

Brain Drain, as was originally coined, refers to emigration of skilled people to North America from post-war Europe^[1].

Thinking back in history, the post-war Europe is in desperate need for rebuilding and, in a short time, there is no way for the region to reproduce these skilled people if they left. The economic impact is tremandous.


To recap the disastrous, substantial number of people were leaving, these people were on desperate needs, and the region can't reproduce these skilled people in a short time.

The term, brain drain, however, have been casually used to describe any number of skilled or well trained people migrated out of a region these days without those disastrous qualities.

To these days, data analysts would wave their magic wands and there comes the number of highly educated people moving out of a region. The number scared people to fight to keep the very last of these people from moving out thinking of inevitable disaster if not to keep them.

However, if we were to practice the practical economics, questions would have been asked: 

• If the number of leaving substantial that would disrupt the economy tremendously?
• If the region is desperate for those highly educated worker?
• If the region could not produce or attract replacement for these skilled worker?

If answers to the above questions are nos, should we panic?

The fundamental of a well-being society do value highly educated citizens for various reasons. The potential high economic production is one, but also the provision of sensible advises and visions to our democratic political system. These advantages and benefits are valued through the overall number of highly educated population but the small number of the migration ones. The measure of the well-being of a society is, therefore, the education attainment.

As to the economic well-being, the first thing in order is to be able to supply the needed worker of the future through the education system. The second thing in order is to produce these workers as efficient as possible including not over supplying workers in less needed fields. The third thing in order is to have a vision in guiding the region to sustainable and plausible economy. The fourth thing in order is then to foster the innovation and entrepreneurship.

** A scenario:
Keeping an integrated circuit designer in Nebraska is of no great value unless he or she was able to sell himself or herself remotely, via internet or something, to chip design companies, which is remotely likely comparing to just physically closer to chip design companies. On the other hand, if, one day, he or she become so successful and re-emigrate back to Nebraska, he or she may be able to pioneer different kind of circuit design company.
 
^[1]Cervantes, Mario; Guellec, Dominique (January 2002). "The brain drain: Old myths, new realities". OECD Observer.

Methodology: Higher Education-Workforce Pipeline IPEDS CIP SOC crosswalk

Original Article

To Be Completed!

** If you are using Microsoft Internet Explorer or Google Chrom browser, you would not be able to read the formulas in this article. These formulas were written in MathML, a W3C standard, and can be viewed in FireFox.

This methodology is much improved over my previous methodology.

In essence, the number of graduates can potentially be hired for a program with CIP code C is:
$$\text{Potentially\_Hired}\left(C\right)=(G_c+\epsilon )\sum _{S_c}{O}_{s_c}\left[\frac{1}{\sum _{C_{S_c}}(G_{C_{S_c}}+\epsilon )}\right]$$
Where $G_x$ is the number of graduates for CIP x, $O_z$ is the number of job opening for a given SOC z, $S_x$ is the SOC S related to a CIP x, $C_z$ is the CIP C related to an SOC z, and $\epsilon$ is a very small number, which play important role when $G_x$ is zero.

Following are drafts and is to be ignored for Now!
Number of graduates for CIP c:

Number of job open for SOC s:
$O_s$
SOC related to a CIP c:
$S_c$
CIP related to an SOC s:
$C_s$
$G_{S_{C_s}}$
$\sum _{-1}^{\mathrm{+1}}$
$\sqrt{{(x_1-x_2)}^2+{(y_1-y_2)}^2}$

Evaluate Nebraska's Education-Workforce Pipeline - CIP SOC Crosswalk

The methodology employed by this article is a major improvement over the previous model in that suggested increase or decrease of award production will have no side effects on related fields!

With the P20 initiatives bobbling up all over the United States, the idea of education pipeline has extended from education to the workforce supply. The idea of linking higher education production to economic prosperity has found its way into legislatures.

The idea of aligning higher education production with the workforce demand isn't new. A crosswalk system that linking the field of study to appropriate occupation was last updated in March 2012 by National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) and the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The crosswalk, also known as CIP to SOC crosswalk, had been used in various workforce supply studies. However, because the complexity of the crosswalk, most of the studies limited their use to few focused fields of interest.

While the CIP to SOC crosswalk is a useful tool, limitations must be observed. The guiding principle behind the development summarized it well:

• “A CIP-SOC relationship must indicate a “direct” relationship, that is, programs in the CIP category are preparation directly for entry into and performance in jobs in the SOC category. The programs satisfy requirements for entry and/or prepare individuals to meet licensure or certification requirements to work in the occupation.”

An example can provide some clarity to the principle. In the nursing field, the registered nurse program (CIP 513801 Associate degree) is crosswalked to the registered nurse (RN) occupation (SOC 291141 Registered Nurse) and not the Licensed Practical Nurse (LPN) occupation (SOC 292061) even though the registered nurse can certainly worked in the LPN occupation. When interpret the result of this work, please keep this in mind, the result is based on 'appropriate' mapping and not the 'all possible mapping'. In the case of Registered Nurse, State of Nebraska can decide to produce more Registered Nurses to fill the LPN occupation. But that probably isn't the most efficient approach.

This article presents a general approach that is applied to all field of studies. The approach is applied to the state of Nebraska data set but can be easily applied to other states.

The data employed are the 2012-22 long term occupation projection data from Nebraska's Department of Labor and the 2013 degree awarded data from IPEDS' (Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System) completion survey.

While the methodology possessed some very desirable characteristics, like all researches, the data employed played vital role in the outcome. During the development, the job opening advertise data available from Nebraska Department of Labor's website were examined. The data for occupation like 'bus driver, School or Special Client' seems to be OK. The data for hot occupations like nurse or computer related positions post some challenges. For one, there were a lot of entries posted by staffing companies or recruiters and, by reading through some of the entries, some of them are simply phantom entries that mimic the real positions. For the nursing jobs, multi-leveled job listings are common. For example, a position can be advertized as RN/LPN, which begged the question of which category this position is counted under. With these observations, the result presented is based on Labor's projection data which can easily be replaced with more accurate data if such data is available.

The methodology employed by this article is different from that of our previous articles. This new approach eliminated couple of the mentioned limitations of previous methodology. Noticeably, when increase or reduce the number of graduates for a given field following the suggestion of this article would not interfere with the number suggested by this article for other fields. This is a major improvement over the previous model in which additional analysis is needed to make sure no side effect occurred in other related fields.

At the heart of this new methodology is the assumption of equal chance of employment, which means that all graduates that can be walked to an occupation, they all have the same chance of getting hired. If supported by real-life data, this factor can be modified to provide better result.

The top 10 education programs that could be targeted to produce more graduates are:

CIP	Title	Dgr Level	Job Open	UnFilled
490205	Truck and Bus Driver/Commercial Vehicle Operator and Instructor.	LessAssct	1,024	(953)
513999	Practical Nursing, Vocational Nursing and Nursing Assistants, Other.	LessAssct	468	(456)
513801	Registered Nursing/Registered Nurse.	Associate	702	(292)
520301	Accounting.	Bachelor	467	(156)
110101	Computer and Information Sciences, General.	Bachelor	259	(113)
520801	Finance, General.	Bachelor	300	(55)
460302	Electrician.	LessAssct	154	(96)
120401	Cosmetology/Cosmetologist, General.	LessAssct	126	(84)
110701	Computer Science.	Bachelor	121	(75)
480501	Machine Tool Technology/Machinist.	LessAssct	144	(65)
460303	Lineworker.	LessAssct	71	(56)

The top 10 eduction programs that could consider reducing graduates are:

CIP	Title	Dgr Level	Job Open	Over Supplied
540101	History, General.	Bachelor	22	163
513801	Registered Nursing/Registered Nurse.	Master	11	180
230101	English Language and Literature, General.	Bachelor	27	198
510912	Physician Assistant.	Master	43	245
450101	Social Sciences, General.	Bachelor	41	255
130301	Curriculum and Instruction.	Master	13	398
131202	Elementary Education and Teaching.	Bachelor	276	404
260101	Biology/Biological Sciences, General.	Bachelor	70	436
520201	Business Administration and Management, General.	Bachelor	368	588
520101	Business/Commerce, General.	Bachelor	386	618

For-Profit Colleges Could Do More on Shortage of Health-Care Workers

Original Article

Summary goes here!

The supply and demand is a complicate problem. But I am glad that at least some people begin to understand the idea of planned policy. As I point out in my various articles, one important role of government is to plan the future by bring in not just the vision but the practical considerations.

As to the question of matching the education to workforce need, a study done with the Nebraska data can provide a guide. There are, of cause, other factors to make the approach more precise, but it is a beginning.

Job outlook for college graduates - the supply and demand in Nebraska

Interact with the author through EduStats - We value your input.

CL Higher Education Center

CL Higher Education Center has just released the data behind the 'workforce supply/demand higher education - Nebraska' report. The methodology is discussed in 'college workforce supply/demand - methodology'.

The released Excel workbook contains few worksheets. One for the oversupply academic programs and one for the under supply academic programs. Besides these two worksheets, there are worksheets that help reader look into how the oversupply and under-supply lists are derived.

In the case of oversupply academic programs, let's look at the academic program: 130301 - Curriculum and Instruction - Master Degree. If we look at the XWalk_ByCIP worksheet, we found that the only appropriate occupation for this CIP is the Instructional Coordinators. That occupation has an annual job opening of 37 while Nebraska colleges produced 523 graduates in the academic year of 2008-09.

An example for the under-supply academic program should provide enough exercises for reader to understand the result better. Look under the XWalk_ByCIP worksheet for the CIP of 521001, it is clear that seven occupations are appropriate for graduates from this CIP. The seven occupations provide a total of 340 job openings a year. By looking under the RvlCIP worksheet for this CIP, we notice that three of the seven occupations can also accept graduates from two other CIPs: 521005 and 521003. These 2 CIPs produce a total 5 graduates in the 2008-09 academic year. The net result is that there can have at least 335 job opening for our focus CIP of 521001. Since during the 2008-09 academic year, there were 226 Nebraska college graduates that are from this CIP, the net results is that there will be at least 109 jobs remain unfilled.

An interesting question to ask is what's the economic implication of all these?

college workforce supply/demand - methodology

Interact with the author through EduStats - We value your input.

In conclusion, we have proofed that the methodology we used does allow us to identify both the definitely over supply and under supply academic programs. To put this in plain English, it means that if we labeled an academic program over supply, the program is definitely over supply - no matter how you simulate the hiring based on the crosswalks. The same is true for the under supply academic programs. Our designation, however, does not suggest to the policy maker to increase the number of graduates of all under supply academic programs to the amount of shortages since some of the programs are related.

This article is a technical note that described the research methodology employed in the analysis of my previous article titled 'workforce supply/demand higher education - Nebraska'.

Updated June 8, 2015: An improved approach provides better directions for program management agency or policy maker.

The whole idea behind the analysis is what we called the worst case scenario analysis, which is commonly used in simplify a complicate problem so that some guidance for further analysis can be devised. A common result of such analysis is the lower bound or upper bound of a variable of interest.

The problem of the supply and demand interaction between higher education and workforce is a complex one. It is not mathematically challenge but nevertheless a complex one. The goal is aimed to understand how college/higher education graduates are fed into the workforce.

The ground work to the problem was laid years ago. Researcher and workforce development workers, after years of study, have documented the field and the level of knowledge needed for each occupation. In the same time, crosswalk tables were created that linked each academic program to the related occupation. In the crosswalk framework, the occupation is classified by the so called 'Standard Occupational Code' (SOC) and the academic program is classified by the 'Classification of Instructional Program' (CIP) code and the degree level awarded.

The complexity of the problem rooted at the fact that the crosswalks between the academic program and the occupation is not a single one to one map. As we can all image that graduates from one academic program can be fed into more than one occupation. The reverse of that is alos true: An occupation can accept graduates from more than one academic programs. It is this complexity that have limited most analysis to a smaller scale. For example, a Texas supply and demand study only focused on few big categories and the 'The Occupational Supply Demand System' website only provides tools for navigating between academic programs and occupations.

An additional complexity is also exist that the education classification system used to classify the occupation is not directly compatible with that used to classify the academic program either. For our study, since we are only interested in college educated graduates, all jobs classified with less than college degree requirement are discarded based on the idea that, for most cases, it wouldn't worth the investment for a college graduates to take that kind of jobs. In order to address the incompatibility between the two education classification system, a new education classification is improvised which allows the creation of a one to one map, in the mathematical sense, from both the academic and the occupational system to the new classification. The mapping is outlined below:

Academic	Ours	Occupational
Less Than 1 Year Awards	Less than 2 year certificates	Postsecondary vocational training
Between 1 and 2 Years Awards	Less than 2 year certificates	Postsecondary vocational training
Associates Degrees	Associate (+Less than 4 year)	Associate degree
Between 2 and 4 Years Awards	Associate (+Less than 4 year)	Associate degree
Bachelors Degrees	Bachelor (+Certificates)	Bachelor's or higher degree, plus work experience
Bachelors Degrees	Bachelor (+Certificates)	Bachelor's degree
Post-Bachelors Certificates	Bachelor (+Certificates)	Bachelor's degree
Post-Bachelors Certificates	Bachelor (+Certificates)	Bachelor's or higher degree, plus work experience
Masters Degrees	Master (+Certificates)	Master's degree
Post-Masters Certificates	Master (+Certificates)	Master's degree
Doctorate Degrees	Doctor	Doctoral degree
First Professional Degrees	First Professional (+Certificates)	First professional degree
Post-First Professional Certificates	First Professional (+Certificates)	First professional degree
Doctor's degree - research/scholarship	Doctor	Doctoral degree
Doctor's degree - professional practice	First Professional (+Certificates)	First professional degree
Doctor's degree - Other	Doctor	Doctoral degree

In theory, with enough computing power, we can simulate all possible scenarios and draw conclusions from the all possible assumptions. However, that kind of approach could easily bury the intuitive common sense and lost the researcher in the forest of data.

Since our goal is to identify the definitely over-supply and the definitely under-supply academic programs, we chose to use the worse case scenario analysis.

Since the process of establishing the lower bound for over-supply is much straightforward, we will describe it first.

By definition, an academic program is over-supply if there are fewer jobs appropriate for the program than the number of graduates from that academic program. By assuming that all appropriate jobs openings for an academic program are available to graduates from that academic program, we can calculate the number of graduates that could not find a job opening by subtracting the number of job openings from the number of graduates. If the result of the calculation is a postive number, we know the number of graduates would not be able to find the appropriate jobs. In reality, some of the appropriate job openings could be filled with graduates from other academic program and, hence, reduce the number of openings available to our focus academic program. However, the program we identified as over supply will still be over supplying its graduates, just to a bigger amount. The result we arrived is, therefore, a lower bound and the academic program we identified is, therefore, a definitely over supply program.

The process of producing the lower bound for the under-supply academic program is a bit more complicated. The idea begins with that if an academic program produced fewer graduates than what the industry can absorb, then that academic program is a under-supply program. The number of shortage in supply or the number of job openings to fill can be calculated by subtracting the number of graduates from the number of those job openings. As a first attempt, we could proceed the calculation using job openings from all appropriate occupations for a given academic program. However, in reality, some of the appropriate job openings could be filled with graduates from other academic programs. The number we arrived previous is, therefore, an over estimate of the shortage problem. The shortage may not even exist if all those appropriate jobs can be filled with graduates from other academic programs.

To resolve this problem, we begin our first step by identifying all the rival academic programs of our focus academic program. By definition, the rival academic programs are programs that could supply graduates to any of the appropriate job opening of our focus academic program. Once we identified all the rival academic program, we can calculated the total rival graduates by adding all the graduates from these rival academic programs. We, now, recalculate the shortage or the number of job opening to fill by subtracting both the number of graduates of our focus program and the rival graduates from the appropriate job openings of our focus program.In reality, not all rival graduates can fill those appropriate job openings. In that case, the number of job openings to be filled will be larger. The result we arrived is, therefore, an absolute minimum of the number of job openings need to be filled. We, therefore, termed that academic program a definitely under-supply program.

In conclusion, we have proofed that the methodology we used does allow us to identify both the definitely over supply and under supply academic programs. To put this in plain English, it means that if we labeled an academic program over supply, the program is definitely over supply - no matter how you simulate the hiring based on the crosswalks. The same is true for the under supply academic programs. Our designation, however, does not suggest to the policy maker to increase the number of graduates of all under supply academic programs to the amount of shortages since some of the programs are related. Increase the graduates in one academic program may reduce the number of job openings of a rival academic program and move that program off the under supply list.

workforce supply/demand higher education - Nebraska

Interact with the author through EduStats - We value your input.

Related blogs:
college workforce supply/demand - methodology
Job outlook for college graduates - the supply and demand in Nebraska (Data Release)
Updated on June 8, 2015: An improved methodology applied to 2013 IPEDS college graduates using Nebraska's 2012-2022 long term occupation projection.

For governing, the leader should look past the status quo and project the better future for the community. For education, the survival is a necessary and minimum. Seeking to reaching the learning limits of a human being is the goal.

More than 25 years ago, Ronald Reagan's 'A Nation at Risk' called for education reform. Since then, various projects aimed to improve American's education debuted.

Most recently, Barack Obama called for the increase of postsecondary education population. Due part to the economic downturn, the enrollment in postsecondary education do increase. The questions, however, is what kind of education these students are pursuing? In what field? Will the degrees they are getting fit the needs of the community? And, therefore, be able to find a job opening.

Through the years, researchers and workforce developers have been working hard in trying to answer this question. Education levels needed for jobs have been studied and tabulated. Fields of knowledge needed for particular jobs are also studied. Crosswalks between the academic program and the standard occupation code (SOC) have been built. However, even with all these advances the analysis of the data still post challenges.

As we can all imaging, the crosswalks between academic programs (classified by CIP code) and occupations is not a direct one to one mapping. A single academic programs may provides knowledge for several occupations. On the other hand, a single occupation classification may accepts graduates from various academic programs. And it is exactly this madness that limited the mass analysis of the workforce supply and demand data since manually sorting through each academic program or occupation is most likely needed. For example, a Texas supply and demand study only focused on the big categories. Also, the 'The Occupational Supply Demand System' website only provides tools for navigating between academic programs and occupations.

The data and methodology used to present the finding here represents a first attempt to answer this analysis need. The methodology used can be refined at a much higher processing cost but will be attempted later by the author. For now, our first order approach do provide some useful information for researchers and policy makers. This implies that now the governor, the education authorities and the policy maker can really put their thoughts in DESIGNing the future of Nebraska. Contrasting to the past, the decision of approving new academic program can now based on both the market's supply and demand and the students' interest.

Before presenting the findings, the author like to provide a word of caution. Fulfill the job market is not the ultimate goal for governing or education. For governing, the leader should look past the status quo and project the better future for the community. For education, the survival is a necessary and minimum. Seek to reaching the learning limits of a human being is the goal. The author would also like readers to keep perspectives on earnings and personal interest. None of the data presented is intended to emphasis the higher earning of a job.

The top 10 of our oversupplied academic programs are:

1. 520201 Business Administration and Management (Bachelor training) - at least 539 graduates would not find a degree appropriate job.
2. 520101 Business/Commerce, General (Bachelor training) - at least 526 graduates ...
3. 130301 Curriculum and Instruction (Master training) - at least 486 graduates ...
4. 260101 Biology/Biological Sciences, General (Bachelor training) - at least 470 ...
5. 511613 Licensed Practical/Vocational Nurse(LPN, LVN, Cert, Dipl, AAS) (less than 2 year certificates) - at least 228 ...
6. 131202 Elementary Education and Teaching (Bachelor training) - at least 217 ...
7. 220101 Law (LL.B., J.D.) (First Professional) - at least 195 ...
8. 521401 Marketing/Marketing Management, General (Bachelor training) - at least 177 ...
9. 511201 Medicine (MD) (First Professional) - at least 150 ...
10. 512001 Pharmacy (PharmD, BS/BPharm [Canada]) (First Professional) - at least 148 ...

The top 10 of our under-supplied academic programs are:

1. 490205 Truck/Bus/Commercial Vehicle Operation (Less than 2 year certificates) - at least 578 academic-training-appropriate job openings remain to be filled.
2. 511601 Nursing - Registered Nurse Training (RN, ASN, BSN, MSN) (Associate training) - at least 330 ...
3. 139999 Education, Other (Bachelor training) - at least 172 ...
4. 460302 Electrician (Less than 2 year certificates) - at least 133 ...
5. 521001 Human Resources Management/Personnel Administration, General (Bachelor training) - at least 109 ...
6. 110301 Data Processing and Data Processing Technology/Technician (Associate training) - at least 105 ...
7. 310501 Health and Physical Education, General (Less than 2 year certificates) - at least 96 ...
8. 011102 Agronomy and Crop Science (Bachelor training) - at least 84 ...
9. 011106 Range Science and Management (Bachelor training) - at least 84 ...
10. 011105 Plant Protection and Integrated Pest Management (Bachelor training) - at least 84 ...
11. 011103 Horticultural Science (Bachelor training) - at least 84 ...

A very interesting observation of these two top 10 list is that the Registered Nurse is in shortage supply while the Practical/Vocational Nurse is oversupplied - I think you can imaging how this can happen with the mis-guided marketing campaign. I would like to see how much money have been wasted in producing these over supplied graduates.

*Detailed data table will be published in the up-coming articles. For interacting with the author, please go to here.

Release of 2008 Educational Attainment by State and Age

CL Higher Education Center

CL Higher Education Center just released the state report on Education Attainment.

The analysis is based on US census' 2008 American Community Survey (ACS). The analysis reported the % of population for each education attainment level and age range. In general, the high percentage of graduate degree workforce correlated well with a state's New Economy Index published by The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation.

Postsecondary Education and Nebraska's Future forum

Original Article
Related material on the internet:
Nebraska Innovation Forum
University of Nebraska 2000 - 2004(strategy plan?)

This is a news report not my comments on the event.

On Dec. 5, 2007, Nebraska Coordinating Commission for Postsecondary Education (CCPE) and Senator Ron Raikes, Chair, Nebraska Legislature's Education Committee, co-host the forum: Postsecondary Education and Nebraska's Future.

The forum features presentations by Dennis Jones, president, National Center for Higher Education Management Systems and Q&A sessions with Nebraska leaders - Dennis Baack, Stan Carpenter, Doug Christensen, Tip O'Neil, Linda Ray Pratt (above, represent education sector), Wendy Boyer and Jim Linderholm (business sector). Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman is also invited. Dennis Jones' presentation can be found here.

Dennis Jones, a native Nebraskan who had been invited to give similar talks to Nebraska's policy makers in the past(e.g. 2003), made his points even clear this time that the most important thing for Nebraska is to strive on economic development. In general, his talk concluded that Nebraska is doing a fair job in educating our kids but is short on building a sustainable economics and, as a result, Nebraska was not able to retain these well educated kids and was not able to achieve economic gain.

At the Q&A session, several good points are raised. Stan Carpenter, with daughter in school, talk about customizing system to fit students learning style. Doug Christensen talked about what K12 system have done in recruiting minority students. Dennis Baack talked about community colleges' efforts in working with Universities, State colleges and private institutions in making the system more economic. Tip O'Neill talk about the culture changes in savings and about legislature's efforts in encouraging saving for education. Linda Ray Pratt talked about University's willingness in engaging the society in economic development and University's efforts in creating the innovation park. She also talked about UNO's efforts in attracting Iowa students. Wendy Boyer, when asked about businesses' view about the training need from higher education institutions, talked about the mixed need from business world and talked about the short term specific training needs of businesses.

Governor Dave Heineman use his opportunity to talk about the difficult budget decision he have to make between other issues and education. Even though he has passions on education and economic development, the tight state budget is limiting the funding state can appropriate to education. The lower tax and budget discipline is his signature.