Northeast students are heading to Georgia for college
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Warm weather, affordability and politics have prompted a teenage migration from the Northeast to the South, including at UGA.
Why it matters: Large Southern state schools, many in already expanding metro areas, are attracting a geographically diverse student body as Americans are increasingly disillusioned with the value of higher education.
- "They're seen not only as more fun, but also more accessible," Jeff Selingo, author of college admissions books, told Axios.
The big picture: Many public Southern schools have lower tuition rates than their private counterparts, and they prioritize merit scholarships, Selingo said.
- The more exciting draws? School spirit and football culture.
By the numbers: In two decades, 84% more students from the North attended public schools in the South, per a Wall Street Journal analysis last year. It jumped 30% from 2018 to 2022.
- UGA saw a 106.1% increase in attendance from students in the Northeast from 2014 to 2023, according to an Axios analysis of National Center for Education Statistics data.
- After Georgia, most Emory University students are from New York, followed by New Jersey and Massachusetts, according to the school's data dashboard. The 3,230 out-of-state students from the Northeast make up an astounding 24% of Emory's student body.
Between the lines: Politics are also a rising factor in some students' decisions. Colleges in Republican-led states returned to in-person classes sooner than colleges in Democratic-led states after the onset of COVID.
Some students have said they wanted to avoid elite colleges in the Northeast and California because of clashes between demonstrators and school administrations over the war in Gaza.
- "Students have said to me, 'I don't want to go to a college where everybody's angry at each other and everybody's fighting over everything,'" Maria Laskaris, a counselor at Top Tier Admissions, a higher education consulting firm, said.
What's next: Alumni of these schools are likely to stay in the South for work after graduating, as the populations in Atlanta and other cities across the region have been growing faster than the country overall.
- About half of graduates work in the same metro area as their college, and two-thirds work in the same state, per 2024 research from the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research.
- "Suddenly you're living there and raising the next generation of kids," Selingo said.