In a state with an aging population and a lack of high paying jobs, skilled students from the many local universities and colleges are heading to other places to build their careers, leaving the state struggling to staunch the "brain drain".

As put by Darrell West...a political science professor at Brown, “I think the state is doing poorly retaining young people just because there aren’t enough well-paying jobs. The students who come out of the state’s universities and colleges generally have to look elsewhere, even if they want to stay in Rhode Island.”

In response, groups like the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation are supporting initiatives like the Business Innovation Factory (BIF) and the Science and Technology Advisory Council (STAC).

Saul Kaplan, who took over the Economic Development Commission’s reins from Michael McMahon last year, acknowledges that Rhode Island “needs to be far more aggressive in taking advantage” of the existing brainpower in the state. “The issue isn’t that people are leaving,” he says. “The issue is that there aren’t enough opportunities for them to stay.”

Of course, even as US Census data suggests that Rhode Island has been slowly losing population since 2004, there are still examples of success. One, Megan O'Conner, a recent URI graduate, ignored the call of Boston and NYC like many of her friends and instead elected to stay in Rhode Island; she now works for the EDC.

“I feel you can get more done here in Rhode Island” than in a more populous place, says O’Connor. “Working at the EDC’s kind of exciting now,” she says, because, “hopefully, 10 years down the road, Rhode Island’s going to be that [economically innovative] spot.”

However, even the companies that have established themselves as prime examples of the EDC's "innovation economy", may have easily slipped away: Kipp Bradford, 33, graduated from Brown University in 1995 and now works as the vice president of engineering at Providence's Design Lab, an invention and design company.

Bradford thinks the local job landscape has improved since the time when he graduated from Brown 12 years ago. He serves on the board of AS220 and socializes with the Providence Geeks, a small, yet strategically important group of tech-savvy thinkers and digital entrepreneurs. Still, looking back to his graduation, “There wasn’t an awareness in my mind of what I would do in Rhode Island,” Bradford recalls. “It’s almost a freak accident that I found this job.” And as it stands, he’s not aware of any other engineering students from his class who remained in Rhode Island, although one recently returned to take a teaching job at Brown.