Out migration It s something we have heard alot about in the last few years However now with more opportunities coming to North Dakota are the young people wanting to stay Brad Feldman joins us now with the final part of his series Open Invitation Growing up in North Dakota one thing I always heard from friends was they cant wait to get out of the state Eight years after graduating from high school I am starting to see more classmates move back However with all of the new opportunities in oil the energy industry and medical fields is this enough to keep the young people in the state Package Derek Miller Senior SMCHS I would say that we have opportunities same quality of opportunities no Each of these four students is about to begin life on their own This means finding a career to make a living Alex Schmidt Senior SMCHS I would say most of them are good jobs and the pay is not as high as in Minneapolis or some of the other bigger cities But the cost of living is lower too so it is kind of a trade off Once they have this career they will face one of the toughest decisions where do they want to live Derek Miller Senior SMCHS I m guessing people want to experience new things and they think North Dakota may be sheltered from some of those opportunities Anne Cleary Senior SMCHS I would love to raise a family in Bismarck Its a perfect place to raise a family To get more thoughts of young people we put together this short six question survey We took it to two different high schools in Bismarck to see how sophomores and seniors look at the opportunities in the state The first question we asked Do you believe there are opportunities in North Dakota after you graduate from college The answer was overwhelmingly yes by each grade surveyed The students stated which industries they see opportunities Here is there top five The number next to the industry is how many times that specific industry was mentioned You can see medical education and technology are consistently in the top three Power plants or energy are also listed by each of the classes The number next to the industry is how many times that specific industry was mentioned However the students who mentioned there are not opportunities in the state specifically mentioned these industries They are looking for something to do with the arts video game technology fashion automotive or business Knowing it takes more than just a job to get someone to decide where to live we put together a list of five traits and asked the students to rank them One being the most important and five being the least important When it comes to quality of life both sophomores and seniors stated it was the most important Then we asked about the wage and cost of living The sophomores had more of a neutral position on this issue while seniors again stated it was one of the most important factors When it comes to their safety both classes ranked this as being one of the most important issues One concern brought up yesterday by Josh Blikre about living in a big city is the commute time He mentioned it takes about thirty minutes just to drive ten miles These students consider the time it takes to get to work only somewhat important The last trait we wanted the students to rank is entertainment You can see the sophomores consider this to be somewhat important However there s a huge range of how much weight Seniors give entertainment about the same amount think it s the most important as the least important After the students had a chance to factor in all of this information we asked them if they plan to stay in North Dakota after their education is complete As you can see more sophomores are willing to move away while the seniors are split As I was going through the surveys I found one interesting trend Twenty-nine of the sophomores and twenty-three of the seniors who answered yes to the first question on whether there are opportunities in the state later stated they still wanted to move out of North Dakota