Katie Bourgeois watched many of her friends leave Louisiana after she graduated from the University in 2000. The 26-year-old Abbeville native was the top student in her class, but she never got on an airplane or loaded a U-Haul for a job in Atlanta or Dallas or New York.
Bourgeois’ decision to stay home is the antithesis of Louisiana’s much-hyped “brain drain,” a term for the out-migration of educated young people to areas with more economic opportunity. She rarely needed to ask friends why they left, but she constantly explains her decision to stay.
Bourgeois is not alone. There are still a large number of people who feel that what Louisiana has to offer them is worth sacrificing the possibility of better pay, more professional opportunities and higher quality of life standards elsewhere.
“It gets in the blood, this ‘laissez-faire, laissez les bon temps rouler’ ethos,” Mildred Worrell wrote in a recent column for Country Roads magazine.
The brain drain is a hot topic Louisiana’s political leaders have addressed for decades, most recently in the 2003 gubernatorial race.
But Worrell, a retired social worker from Clinton, La., has a bad taste in her mouth from years of attempts to bring the state up to national standards.
“The idea that some elitist people would want to come and begin to diagnose us and treat us is a resented deal for me,” Worrell said. “They want to come in and cut all the salt and fat from our food and clean up our government. Louisiana is what it is. If you want to live in a progressive state, don’t come here.”
Many young educated people feel staying is not an option, but most people who are raised in Louisiana never leave. While nearly 180,000 people moved from Louisiana to other states from 1990-2002, millions more remained, according to the Council for A Better Louisiana’s 2003 Louisiana Fact Book.
Louisianians have let more than “bon temps,” the Cajun French phrase for “good times,” roll for its centuries of existence. For every bon temps, Louisiana has a statistic or problem that chases away its best and brightest young people in droves.
Louisianians have been forced to pay for the state’s traditions of underachievement.
According to the Council for a Better Louisiana, about 75 percent of Louisiana residents do not have college degrees. The residents who do not leave contribute to the highest incarceration rate in the United States. Many send their children to one of Louisiana’s 103 failing or at-risk schools. Income per capita is $5,000 less than the national average. Sixteen percent live in poverty.
But none of that gave Chris Macaluso a good enough reason to leave. Macaluso is a 28-year-old University graduate who has never lived anywhere but his hometown of Baton Rouge. He was hired in January as an assistant manager for the Coastal Conservation Association.
“Even though there were jobs in other parts of the country, it was weighing the options of leaving the friends and family I had left for a place I was unfamiliar with and a job that I might not like anyway,” he said. “I didn’t want to be put in a position where I wasn’t going to know anybody and struggle. I figured if I was going to struggle I might as well do it where there were people who would help me.”
Macaluso held a string of temporary positions in lieu of leaving for other offers.
“It was very frustrating because I worked hard while I was in college to qualify myself for certain things,” he said. “I couldn’t get jobs because there was so much competition for so few positions. I was offered a job, but the pay was not nearly enough for me to make a living.”
Worrell said she remembers a time when leaving was not an option many people considered.
“In my graduating class, the Class of 1964, no one became a doctor or a lawyer,” she said. “A lot of people became teachers or went into the family business. Our aspirations were not that high and nobody expected to leave.”
‘THE WAY IT’S ALWAYS BEEN’
Louisiana experts say it is no accident the state ended up in its current position. They do not blame its party-friendly ways, but rather its past leadership. Many generations of politicians created a monster for today’s problem solvers.
“Louisianians have traditionally just simply undervalued the importance of education, specifically of a well-educated workforce,” said Louisiana history professor John Rodrigue. “It’s not so much the culture, but the history.”
Rodrigue said political leaders kept educational standards to a minimum in order to sustain an industry workforce.
“For the powers that be, the people who ran this state for decades and decades, there was almost a disincentive for providing an education which would create a well-educated workforce,” he said.
“Throughout Louisiana’s history, the economy has been based on extractive industries. Whether it was growing cotton or sugar cane, whether it was extracting oil and natural gas in the 20th century or lumber in the late 19th and 20th centuries, industries have relied on a poorly educated, poorly paid workforce,” Rodrigue said.
The low expectations were set by the people who should have been paving the way for progress.
“Dependence on first agricultural then petrochemical-based industries which required large labor forces with few educational skills led to populist-based politics where winning politicians won with messages designed to directly help the poor, not to build infrastructure,” said University political science professor Wayne Parent, who recently wrote a book on Louisiana politics.
Rodrigue also pointed out a darker side of Louisiana’s history.
“We have to remember race,” he said. “In the years after the Civil War and well into the 20th Century, white Louisianians were willing to suffer ignorance, so long as it kept the blacks down.
“The white political leadership didn’t provide a public education for whites as a way of making sure that the blacks didn’t get it. They consciously used race as a way to avoid the very real questions of education and economic development and things like that. Some may disagree, but that’s my take on it,” Rodrigue said.
The same situations hampered much of the Deep South, but in the post-segregation era, the region has made significant economic and technological progress. At least most of it has. Louisiana was the only state in the South to lose more population than it gained in the 1990s.
“The South is not really different anymore, with cable TV and the homogenization of different cultures,” Rodrigue said. “It’s the whole Sun Belt thing — the South has really made strides. Unfortunately, Louisiana has been able to take part in some of that, but it is really behind the curve compared to some states like North Carolina and Texas.”
Louisiana still relies on a work force with minimal higher education. According to the CABL Fact Book, only 15 percent of jobs require a bachelor’s degree or higher.
“There has been a progressive reform in the 20th Century, but it’s still pretty tough to fight the kind of ingrained mentality,” Rodrigue said.
“Louisiana has still continued to lag in all the ways that we measure quality of life, such as adult literacy,” he said. “The state really does run the risk of being left behind.”
Worrell predicts a future for the state that would seem bleak to outsiders, but to residents who cherish the status quo, it is acceptable.
“Louisiana is what it is — it’s what it’s always been,” Worrell said. “The beautiful thing about Louisiana is it’s never going to change. It won’t get better. It might get worse. I’ll be dead by the time it changes.”
WHAT’S IN THE BLOOD
Louisiana’s redeeming qualities — hospitality, famous cuisine, deep religious roots, family tradition and, of course, the party-friendly culture — are dearest to those who make it their home.
“You can go to Spanish Town Mardi Gras and then there’s Easter and then we get crawfish,” Worrell said. “Then it gets hotter than hell and then you go to LSU football and then there’s Thanksgiving and then it’s Carnival again. We like our ‘laissez les bon temps rouler’ and there’s always a ‘bon temps’ lurking around the corner somewhere.”
The lure of big city lights was not strong enough for Bourgeois to leave Louisiana.
“I had job offers in New York,” she said. “I just realized that I was going to be rich here on what would make me poor in New York and I would be lonely and poor there. Everyone says the grass is always greener, but when I looked into it, it just wasn’t.
“I have plenty of friends who aren’t here who are struggling elsewhere in the country, in California and in Texas. There’s not one of them who is doing better than me. I would say some are doing worse.”
Bourgeois said that, though jobs may be less plentiful than in other areas, there are hidden benefits in trying to stay home.
“You’re surrounded by people you know and it allows you to network better,” she said. “You can say, ‘Hey, you know my family. Give me a job.’ You couldn’t do that in New York because they don’t care who the hell you are.”
Louisiana natives said the ties that bind them to friends and family here are stronger than anywhere else.
“You don’t realize how close-knit communities here are,” Bourgeois said. “The friends I have who have gone very far have found that difficult. Leaving can sometimes be a bigger deal than we realize.”
Though Macaluso did not quickly find a perfect job, he was able to pursue other opportunities.
“I like the people who live here, and I like the fact that a lot of the things that I really like to do are here,” he said. “I know that I could probably find somebody to go duck hunting with or go fishing with or watch a ball-game with in another part of the world. It’s just hard to leave the things that you grew up doing and enjoy so much. I would have been very homesick.”
For Worrell, quality of life is a relative term.
“We appreciate quality of life here. It may not be quality of life in terms of making $110,000 as opposed to $80,000, but if someone wants to put up with the rest of it for $110,000, that’s fine,” she said.
The familiarity of home is another reason Worrell said she would not leave.
“I like knowing who I’m dealing with. If I wake up and the toilet’s leaking, I know where the plumber lives,” she said. “I don’t have to call and get six different prices. I can leave the door open and he will come and fix it.”
WHERE TO GO — OR NOT GO — FROM HERE
Patrick Meehan is about to begin his job search. The University senior from Shreveport will begin locally.
“I could live in Louisiana all my life and be happy,” he said.
But he also said he is not willing to sacrifice the career he wants to stay in Louisiana.
Taryn Miller, also a University senior, will take her chances in her hometown.
“I don’t think that New Orleans is the best market, but I want to be near my family,” she said. “I’ve always known I wanted to stay.”
State politicians are focusing time and energy on creating opportunities for people such as Miller and Meehan to stay in Louisiana.
The efforts begin in developing university programs like TOPS, which pays in-state school tuition for Louisiana high school graduates.
“I think that lately the state has made substantial progress,” Parent said. “I’m hopeful they’ll continue, and I think they will.”
Rodrigue said acknowledgment is one thing, but improvement is going to be difficult.
“It’s one thing to at least recognize there’s a problem even if you don’t have the solution to it,” he said. “That’s the first step to maybe doing something about it. The leadership is going to determine whether Louisiana can overcome its past and tradition and get in line with the rest of the country.”
People who never left say they have gotten dubious impressions from friends who moved away.
Bourgeois’ job as development director for the LSU Manship School of Mass Communication requires that she keep track of the school’s alumni base.
“Most of [the alumni] move on. That’s not to say that they’re particularly successful and many of them come back within two or three years.
“I think the people who do leave are very brave. There are a lot of reasons you would think the grass is greener, but you can always hop on a plane and visit. I encourage people to stay and look around for jobs. I don’t think I was one of the lucky ones. I looked around. It’s not impossible to make it here,” Bourgeois said.
Bourgeois said one problem is that students are led to believe they will not be able to stay.
“I always said I would stay until I could command the salary to lead the life I was accustomed to leading in New York, but I don’t think I’ll leave now,” she said.
Macaluso said he watched the majority of his friends leave after receiving their degree. Nearly half already have returned and most of the others plan to eventually come back home.
“They moved to other places like Houston, Denver, Washington, D.C., Atlanta,” he said. “Even though they were working, they weren’t making a lot of money and they didn’t know anybody up there. They just didn’t feel like they fit in — they expressed feelings of unhappiness in the situations they were in.
“The interesting thing was, once they moved out to these other places and got entry-level positions and showed their ability to work, then it made it a lot easier for them to come back to Louisiana and find jobs making better money.
“There are very few of them who have left who don’t have the intention of coming back. There are some who have always felt like Baton Rouge is beneath them, but they also have said that there is no place like it,” Macaluso said.
Ben Tuminello was one of Macaluso’s college friends who moved to Atlanta for a job as a regional sales manager for a retail supplier.
“I plan on moving back to Baton Rouge at some point,” Tuminello said. “When I moved here I thought I would stay for a little while and go back, but I’ve enjoyed it so much here that, while I still plan on going back, it may be a longer time before I do so.”
His friends’ return has taught Macaluso lessons. He said he realizes that there may come a time when his professional potential wins out over his love for Louisiana. It is highly unlikely that he could be promoted without relocating to the Coastal Conservation Association headquarters in Houston.
“You only get a measured amount of time to accomplish the things you want to accomplish,” he said. “This place may not allow me to accomplish all of those things. I can see a few years from now hitting a wall where I won’t be able to move upward anymore. I could have to move somewhere else where I could be more influential.
“Now I realize that I could always come back here if I wanted to. This place really isn’t going anywhere.”