Empty heads and church bingo

It's known as the "brain drain," and it's one reason the state of Indiana remains this country's sleeping kid in the back of algebra class. According to the 2000 census, only one in five Indiana residents over the age of 25 are college educated. Indiana just can't seem to hold on to those precious graduates, who live in the denuded bosom of this great state for four years, leaving her forever after graduation to live in another state with a bigger bosom.\nIndeed, among corn and soybeans, a continual supply of educated men and women is one of Indiana's chief exports. Unfortunately, the state gets nothing in return, save the lackluster honor of being outshined by its University.\nI used to take pride in saying I'm a lifelong Hoosier born in Indianapolis (which, for you out-of-staters, is about 200 miles southeast of Chicago). I somehow grew up with the notion that my state was the best of the 50 -- or at least in the top 5. When I was in grade school I even started a civil war with a kid from Ohio to defend Indiana's honor. He went for the arm. I went for the eye. Score one shiner for Hoosier pride.\nBoth of my parents graduated from this University. Knowing of IU's high educational acclaim from my earliest days, I had always planned on attending after high school. At the time, it was just common sense that our great state must have an equally great university. Otherwise, how did all the rich and important people get smartimicated?\nSoon after graduation my stately pride took its first hit. After two years of collegiate residency and an education in the world outside of my Hoosierland bubble, I finally understood that Indiana was in economic distress. Furthermore, I discovered that the state didn't make this University, and this University definitely didn't make the state. IU began to look more and more like the Nile River of collegiate institutions -- a delta of education, cultivating some of the greenest crops of lush young professionals in the world, surrounded by a desert of recession.\nBy the time students have four years of a college education, they are smart enough to understand that getting a job in Indiana after graduation would be the economic equivalent of playing church bingo: There's a 2-to-1 chance you'll kill yourself out of sheer boredom long before you ever win a scant portion of the jackpot. Most of us will figure, "Why gamble with some stupid chips and cardboard when a luxury casino is just down the road?"\n My last remnant of Hoosier pride (not associated with this college and its basketball team) was curbed last Wednesday when driving north on State Road 37 to Indianapolis. A large red and white billboard on the side of the highway reads, "There are 400,000 Indiana University graduates in Indiana. How many do you know?" The statistic itself was frivolous but presented in a hopelessly upbeat fashion, with images of success and smiling faces staring back -- the last-ditch effort of a state whose denial mirrored my own.\nIt almost makes this Hoosier bird want to migrate elsewhere.