Last week we dove into the data to help explain where out-of-state students come from. We found that the number of out-of-state and international students attending elite public institutions is on the rise, and that at some public institutions, the number of out-of-state students outnumbers in-state students.
A comment on that post got us thinking. The comment came from a parent whose son is from California and decided to attend a university in Alabama. She mentioned how happy she is with his college choice and that he’s having a wonderful experience there, which is great, considering how few students from California study in Alabama. We know that in California, the number of students that stay in the state versus those that leave is about 8 to 1, according to the latest year of available data. In fact, in the state of Alabama, only 393 of the freshmen students are from California.