According to a report in the Des Moines Register from last summer, 51 percent of Iowa college students plan to leave the state after graduation. This is a staggering figure. The actual number of people who manage to get out of Iowa might be far less, but it is the desire to flee that has our benevolent forebears concerned.

Doesn’t Iowa have a lower than average crime rate? Isn’t Iowa a nice, calm, cool place to lay one’s head after a hard day at work? Isn’t Iowa the kind of place you can raise children in relative safety? Do we not offer some of the best education money can buy from kindergarten to college?

Maybe we do.

Unfortunately that doesn’t quite cut it when you are 18-22, and you are aching to live life to its fullest and make a fat wad of cash in the process.

Iowa is indeed a great place to grow up. I’ve been around a bit and I can quite honestly say I would choose, in retrospect, to have grown up elsewhere. I never had to worry much about dodging bullets on my way to school. The moral climate of this state certainly won’t twist one’s mind before one has a chance to twist it themselves. Though drugs have always been available, I never felt unduly pressured to use them.

When I went to school, abuses occurred and incompetency and prejudice occasionally reared their vile heads, but I was properly educated and nurtured by teachers who cared. I could have faired much worse in another state and I know it.

Is there a city in Iowa that ranks with Paris, London, New York,Chicago or New Orleans for diversity of life, art and commerce? Of course not, and that is why Iowa will always lose its youth.

You can’t keep kids down on the farm once the fair has come to town and opened their eyes to the wide world.

Television is the travelling freak show of the modern age, and kids watch hours of it every day. They need only watch a sitcom once in a while to see that life is different once you cross the Mississippi or the Missouri.

It’s not immediately different, Illinois and Nebraska aren’t exactly examples of cosmopolitinism, but my point is still valid.

Los Angeles and New York hold sway over this country, and no boy or girl born in Iowa would be human if they did not fantasize about life some place where the lights shine and the music plays 24 hours a day.

Iowa is concerned and, well, it should be. It is concerned that young people get their homegrown degrees and beat feet for ironically greener pastures.

Iowa is concerned that its population is decreasing at an alarming rate. It is concerned that its workforce is dwindling, and it is concerned that the economy will stagnate because of this.

You hear solutions about importing workers by making Iowa a more inviting place for immigrants, but you never hear anyone suggest that Iowa needs to take a look at what it offers the youth of this state.

Iowa raises its young the way it raises livestock. Iowa fattens them up until they are 18 and then wonders why they balk when all that is left for them is the slaughterhouse.

And if it’s not the slaughterhouse, it’s the telemarketing firm, the fast food industry or the mall.

Iowans who stick around for college get four more years of fattening, but their fate is not significantly brighter. Not everyone aspires to work in agribusiness. It is an honorable extension of our past, but not much more.

There is no art here. Not just in the form of abundant museums and art houses and cinemas. There is no art in the soul.

Iowans who manage to cultivate a little art in themselves are as desirable as cutworms. I’m not talking about artists like Robert James Waller, but people who see the world differently and inspire others to do the same.

Could Halston have designed all those hats in Iowa? Sure, but we would have looked at them and said something typically Iowan like, “Oh, that’s different.”

Could John Wayne have become the Duke had he ventured no further than Des Moines? Not likely.

Iowa’s youth have no choice but to leave this fair state of ours. This is a great place for kids and old people, but for those critical years in between, Iowans will HAVE to leave if they want to do anything with their lives besides work, drink and watch TV until they retire.