CASSIE CHAMBERS ARMSTRONG CONFRONTS BRAIN DRAIN IN KENTUCKY
At 17, she faced a crossroads. It was the middle of her junior year of high school in Berea, Ky., and decisions about college and life beyond her small town loomed large in her mind. Her mother and grandmother were, of course, supportive of her desire to go to school away from home but worried for her. They had never left this community. What advice could they offer? Would she be okay?
Soon, a once-in-a-lifetime academic opportunity presented itself and it was time for Cassie Chambers Armstrong to take her first step into the world.
Cassie Goes West
She was born while her mother was finishing her degree at Berea College. Her mother was the first person to graduate from college in her family and her father held an advanced degree in agricultural science from the University of Kentucky. As a result, Cassie knew that education was her ticket out of town.
Owsley County, Kentucky courtesy Cassie Chambers Armstrong
She would forgo her senior year in Berea to attend a unique, 2-year cultural and educational experience in New Mexico: United World College. The only student from Kentucky and one of the few Americans enrolled in the program, she was surrounded by new cultures and perspectives. This once-in-a-lifetime experience would prepare her for the next step in achieving an elite education. But it would also come with a cost.
Meeting students from around the world who were touted as her peers, she began to view her roots in Owsley County differently. Her new friends from places like the Netherlands and Pakistan bonded despite their disparate backgrounds, but she struggled to consider her own cultural roots to be special. Instead, she linked her roots to the declining socioeconomic conditions of the region, further complicating her feelings about her home in Eastern Kentucky.
Still, this educational space and experience would propel her. After attending Wellesley College for a year, she would transfer to Yale. Once she finished her degrees there, she would move onto the London School of Economics and then Harvard Law, where she worked with and learned from some of the most important thought leaders in the world.
Her story is indeed a remarkable one. But her decision after graduation from Harvard makes her story a unique one. She chose to come back to Kentucky.
When a person with a college degree leaves a state for economic, political or social reasons, they contribute to the phenomena known as brain drain. As the 21st century has progressed, Kentucky has secured one of the worst brain drain records in the country.
Diagnosing the Brain Drain Problem in Kentucky
A bombshell national report on brain drain by the Joint Economic Committee was released in April 2019. It features an alarming data set that identifies the Southeast and Rust Belt portions of the United States as the focal points of net brain drain. Notably, from 1970-2017, Ketucky was ranked the worst in terms of college-educated people leaving the state.
Conversely, the study found that prior to 1970, Kentucky and other Southeastern states actually had an impressive net brain gain. In other words, the Commonwealth at this point welcomed entrants that were more educated than the general population.
For a number of reasons, the region, and specifically the state of Kentucky, experienced an alarming brain drain rate between 1970-2017 where a startling 28.59% gap between highly educated leavers and entrants emerged. This figure indicates that a substantially higher number of highly educated people left the state, with relatively few coming in.
What makes this even more puzzling is Kentucky’s brain gain rate prior to 1970, according to the same metric. Staggeringly, at a -20.83% brain drain rate, Kentucky ranked first in the nation in net brain gain, meaning more highly educated people were moving into the state over that same population leaving it.
This simply isn’t the case today, though. To localize this sentiment, consider the story of Alex Frommeyer. A Northern Kentucky native and University of Louisville Speed School of Engineering graduate, Frommeyer cultivated private and public resources in the state to develop a startup with a classmate. Importantly, he notes that Kentucky did everything correctly to incubate the dental technology startup:
Cassie Chambers Armstrong growing up in Owsley County, Kentucky
“It lured smart and high-achieving students to stay in the state for college, helped them afford to get master’s degrees in engineering, allowing them to mix together their raw ingredients to spark a new idea and new business. Then, it further supported their entrepreneurial endeavors to retain the business firmly within the walls of the state.”
But still, because Kentucky did not have the infrastructure to lure major venture capital firms to the state, Frommeyer’s company had to relocate to Columbus, Ohio to secure funding. While this might seem like an extenuating or isolated circumstance, many graduates from the Commonwealth often leave because other states have greater resources and funding opportunities.
And from this dearth of economic opportunity comes both social and psychological consequences. Cassie Chambers Armstrong, in her memoir Hill Women, elaborated on the motivating factors that shaped her decision to go to school and get an education out of the state. She said, “It’s just that I -- more so with each day -- defined myself as someone who achieved. And for many years, I would believe that achieving meant staying outside of the community that had formed me.”
When we sat down for an interview with Cassie in August of 2020, she gave more direct context for this prevailing motivation to leave: “For most of my early adult years, including when I went to Harvard, I thought ‘I’ve made it out of Kentucky. I’m on this path. I’m going to stay in New York or California.’ Because I saw that as progress. And I saw that as better from what I came from.”
Finding Solutions
It’s an uphill battle for the state to navigate, but it’s certainly not impossible. Kentucky to the World’s President and CEO, Shelly Zegart, addressed this problem in an opinion piece in the Courier Journal in October 2018. She rightly identified the innovative, creative, and challenging cultures of major urban environments like Manhattan and San Francisco, and how because these places are hotbeds of artistic and technological activity, they attract top talent across the country.
Kentucky is hard pressed to compete with these major metropolises, but that’s really not the point. Instead, it’s important for Kentucky to recognize that, according to Zegart “Our state will never achieve the greatness that we all know that it can without drawing and maintaining young, highly educated, intelligent, creative and ambitious people.”
Cassie Chambers Armstrong courtesy of the University of Louisville
Similarly, Chambers Armstrong told us that it was when she reflected on the conditions that contributed to her success, she decided to return to Kentucky, saying, “It wasn’t until I got further along that I realized all the opportunities I had -- the fact that I was at Harvard, the fact that I was at Yale -- was because of my community.”
Equipped with the tools she gained from these Ivy League institutions, she came back to the Bluegrass state as a lawyer to support marginalized women attempting to escape domestic violence. She realized that her academic and professional success came with a sense of moral responsibility. “That was what led me to decide to come back to Kentucky and work with women living in poverty,” she said, “and use the skills I had as a lawyer to do that.”
Right Here, Right Now
Kentucky to the World remains motivated in cultivating and nourishing educational excellence among the student population of the Commonwealth. Through initiatives like KTW’s Student Programs and our new interactive Student and Educator Portal, students can experience firsthand the opportunities all around them.
Thanks to our partners at Lifetime Wealth Strategies, we’ve been able to connect over 1,200 students with our featured speakers in more engaging, more immersive settings. Our mission is to motivate students to stay in the Commonwealth because of economic and social opportunity. Learn more and consider donating to further our mission here.
