It is often told that graduate students who are interested in their post-graduate academic career need to be open to move to places they may not want to live. This advice is because of how difficult it is to obtain a tenured professor position.

Today, as graduate students increasingly pursue careers in academia, this advice may not be very important.

Graduate students want to address the potential consequences of post-graduate students for communities and states across the country, which increasingly rely on stable skilled workers to power the economy. Locations deemed to be bad may be difficult to attract and retain the next generation of scientists, engineers, professors and other graduate students to fill out majors.

We are sociologists who are looking at some of the factors that affect graduate education and career paths, as part of a research project supported by the National Science Foundation. In March 2025, we distributed a survey to a sample of graduate students in the United States, including five natural and social science disciplines: physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, and sociology.

As part of the survey, we asked students to identify the state they would rather live in and places they would rather go. To some extent, our findings are dependent on some past anecdotes and evidence of the number of applications received in academic positions in different states or regions.

But very little data directly assesses student preferences, and our survey also provides some evidence that policies in certain states have negatively impacted their ability to attract well-educated people.

Favorite, least willing

In our study, we constructed a sample of each graduate program in each of the five disciplines, based on U.S. News and World Report rankings. We received nearly 2,000 answers from students. Almost all of these students (particularly 98%) pursue a PhD in their respective fields.

As part of the survey, we asked students to identify where they “want” to live, and where they “don’t” to live after completing their graduate courses. For each question, we provided students with a list of all states and selected “outside the United States.”

Considering only the overall percentage, California became the list of preferred locations, with 49% of investigators saying a preference for living there, followed by 45% in New York and 41% in Massachusetts.

On the other hand, Alabama is most often elected as a state student, saying they are reluctant to move, with 58% declaring they don’t want to live there. Next comes Mississippi and Arkansas, both of which are over 50%, saying they are reluctant to move to either state.

Preference group

While these two lists are in many ways like inverted each other, there are some exceptions. In addition to the overall percentage of each survey question, we used statistical analysis to identify basic groups or clusters in states that were more similar to each other on the “first” and “reluctant” issues.

A cluster represented by California, New York and Massachusetts is characterized by high and low levels of preference. About 35% to 50% of students say they prefer to live in these places, while only 5% to 10% say they are reluctant to live in them. The response “outside the United States” is also in this category, which is worth noting given the recent concerns about the current generation of PhDs. Students who wish to leave the country and other countries work hard to recruit their students.

The second cluster represents a lower preference level, 20% to 30% state, while an uninformed level is higher, 7% to 15%. Nevertheless, these are the states of universally favorable opinions of graduate students on life after completing the course. The cluster includes states such as Colorado, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and New Jersey.

The third group of countries indicated positions with priority rates similar to the reluctance rate, ranging from 10% to 20%. The cluster includes states such as Minnesota, Delaware and Virginia.

The fourth and fifth clusters consist of states where the unwilling rate exceeds the preference rate, and the size of the gap distinguishes the two clusters. In the fourth cluster, at least some students (5% to 10%) expressed preference for life, while about 30% to 40% of students said they were unwilling to live. This cluster includes Florida, Montana, South Carolina and Utah.

Few students expressed preference for the U.S. life included in the fifth cluster, while the highest percentage (40% to 60%) indicated reluctance to live. The cluster includes Alabama, Kansas, Oklahoma, and South Dakota.

Signs of current politics

Many factors can influence our preferences for the place we want to live in, including family, weather, and urban, rural or suburban preferences. The politics of a community can also influence how we perceive a place.

In fact, political factors may be particularly concerned with graduate students. In recent years, some states have taken a more hostile stance to specific disciplines, institutions of higher education in general, or majors of interest to graduate students. While states such as Florida and Texas have been leading such efforts, many other states follow.

Interestingly, our statistical grouping of countries found that students were reluctant to live in states such as Texas, Florida, Georgia, and Ohio, and our statistics were not high given the corresponding preference levels in these states. For example, about 10% of students choose Texas as the place they want to live after graduation. Looking at other states with similar preference levels, we expect about 10% to 20% of students to say they are reluctant to live in Texas. Instead, this percentage is actually 37%. Similarly, 5% of students said they prefer living in Florida. Other states with this preference rate have about 35% unknowledgement rates, but 45% in Florida.

Although our data cannot tell us with certainty, these gaps may be a function of these states’ own policies, or aligning with federal policy’s hostility to graduate students and their future employers.

These findings suggest that communities and employers in some states may be recruiting graduate students once they have obtained their degree and are recruiting graduate students for employment.