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What did I read this week? Three things in my inbox caught my attention. They cover very different subjects—graduate migration, college athletics, and quality regulation—but all ask how higher education demonstrates the value it claims to create. The Strada report asks which institutions build a state’s college-educated workforce. The GAO report asks what institutions receive in return for their growing investment in athletics. Nicola Dandridge’s paper asks what educational quality means and who has the authority to define it.

A new Strada report provides a fascinating analysis of interstate migration among working-age adults with bachelor’s or graduate degrees. This is an important issue as states increasingly focus on workforce development. The findings were counterintuitive to me: I had pictured college graduates moving to cities in search of work and expected to find more evidence of brain drain.

Instead, the Strada report shows that states build their college-educated workforces primarily by educating and retaining their own residents—not by competing to attract mobile graduates from elsewhere.

Most college-educated workers remain surprisingly close to home, although the proportions vary considerably by state. Two-thirds still live in the state where they attended high school: 55% attended high school and college and now work in the same state, while another 12% left the state for college but later returned.

The type of institution students attend is also associated with whether they remain in their home state. Broad-access institutions are particularly important producers of homegrown talent.

Approximately two-thirds of graduates from broad-access public institutions attended college and now work in their home state. Only around half of graduates from the most selective public institutions followed that path. Broad-access private nonprofit institutions contributed to homegrown talent at rates similar to those of public institutions.