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Study Says Massachusetts Best State For Technology
Anonymous Coward writes "The Milken Institute (site is cnn/msnbc/wapo dotted it seems) has released a study claiming MA is the best state for technology while Texas has dropped to 26th. I'm curious on everyone's thoughts on this. It seems to me Arizona and Austin are most attractive because of the low cost of living and lots of open space. I just don't see (in my job hunting) very many start-up or expansion in the states they list at the top.
Lots more at Google News."
Reader footh adds a link to a PDF of the results.
State Rank(2004) Rank(2002) Rank Change Score(2004)
Massachusetts MA 1 1 0 84.35
California CA 2 3 1 78.86
Colorado CO 3 2 -1 78.77
Maryland MD 4 4 0 78.19
Virginia VA 5 5 0 72.27
Washington WA 6 6 0 69.87
New Jersey NJ 7 7 0 69.03
Minnesota MN 8 10 2 67.49
Utah UT 9 9 0 66.49
Connecticut CT 10 8 -2 66.26
Rhode Island RI 11 21 10 64.01
New Hampshire NH 12 13 1 63.43
Delaware DE 13 11 -2 62.51
New Mexico NM 14 20 6 61.75
New York NY 15 12 -3 60.66
Pennslyvania PA 16 16 0 60.36
Arizona AZ 17 18 1 58.47
Georgia GA 18 15 -3 58.10
Oregon OR 19 23 4 57.76
North Carolina NC 20 17 -3 57.28
Illinois IL 21 19 -2 56.59
Vermont VT 22 31 9 56.00
Texas TX 23 14 -9 54.91
Ohio OH 24 27 3 54.18
Michigan MI 25 24 -1 54.01
Kansas KS 26 22 -4 53.12
Wisconsin WI 27 25 -2 51.76
Nebraska NE 28 32 4 50.91
Indiana IN 29 30 1 50.73
Idaho ID 30 26 -4 49.03
Missouri MO 31 28 -3 48.11
Florida FL 32 29 -3 44.47
Maine ME 33 36 3 43.47
Tennessee TN 34 40 6 42.77
Oklahoma OK 35 37 2 42.65
Alabama AL 36 33 -3 42.36
Iowa IA 37 35 -2 41.90
Montana MT 38 34 -4 40.65
Hawaii HI 39 43 4 40.05
Alaska AK 40 39 -1 39.91
Wyoming WY 41 38 -3 38.72
Louisiana LA 42 44 2 36.66
Nevada NV 43 42 -1 36.09
South Carolina SC 44 41 -3 35.94
North Dakota ND 45 45 0 34.55
West Virginia WV 46 48 2 33.65
South Dakota SD 47 47 0 33.31
Kentucky KY 48 46 -2 32.61
Arkansas AR 49 50 1 29.53
Mississippi MS 50 49 -1 27.48
State Average 52.64
Massachusetts kinda... sucks. I lived there for 10 years (college +6) and it got more and more expensive, the people got REAL nasty after 9/11 and the Big Dig will never end! Calling it the "best tech state" also depends on whether you actually HAVE a job there - the dot-com bomb slammed a lot of young info-workers. Also, it's called "taxachusetts" for a reason.
Still, Boston has some advantages: the James Gate Pub, unbelievably hot college girls (Portsmouth is still better...) and some great bands.
This might be flame-bait, but the place has got some real problems.
Josh
gigantino.tv - Heavy but weighs nothing.
Yes - it's that Michael Milken - the securities fraud guy.
"if I move to Jackson, Little Rock, or Bowling Green, that my skills will be in higher demand?"
I just left Little Rock, AR. There are very few tech jobs in Arkansas. Most of them would be in North West AR around Fayetville. I tried for 3 months to find a job. I moved to TX and a week later had a job.
I lived in Massachusetts for 8 years and only set foot in the boston metro area 5 times. Boston isn't everything. Backwoods New England is VERY purty.
When you say "Arizona" for technology, you actually mean "Metro Phoenix." In the Phoenix area you certainly have plenty of "space" mostly occupied by roads and red tile roofs: my commute is over 25 miles one way, with an average rush-hour time of 40 minutes by freeway. I live in the north Valley (far-north Phoenix) compared to the "East Valley" where the orifice is. Mass-transit consists of two busses and a transfer, net time about two hours one-way (not counting a half-hour walk to the bus stop in 110F weather.)
Despite the north/east thing, I have a shorter commute than several cow-orkers who live in the East Valley because (a) they actually live farther out, and (b) the east-west rush hour traffic through Tempe, Chandler, Mesa, and Gilbert crawls on a good day.
Technology employment used to consist of Motorola, now it's Intel that employs more engineers than everyone else combined. They sack 10% of their staff every year.
Education consists of Arizona State University, with 60,000 students who all commute and haven't any other schools to choose from: ASU knows that and treats them as nothing but revenue sources. The only requirement for tenure is hitting your quota of grant money. This might matter more if students ever saw a professor, but they have better things to do, like fill out grant applications.
Oh, and the only "open spaces" any of us see are when SR101 takes us past the Salt River Reservation (cotton fields, whiteflies that gum up your windshield) or SR202 takes us along the (dry) Salt River bed. Otherwise, it's a pretty fair drive to get out of town.
Don't forget those 110F summer days; it was 97F yesterday (late March). I happen to love the heat, but partly because I grew up here and partly because it keeps the riffraff locked up in air-conditioned denial. Yes, you can see mountains when the air clears. Just don't kid yourself that you'll be able to live in those "open spaces" and still work for Intel; even Craig Barrett has to fly to Montana for that.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Too bad they're running IIS:Ah well.
The Army reading list
Sure it is. Unless you actually want a JOB in technology.
with a permit (renewing mine this week end) - but anyone who can legally own a handgun can carry in the open here.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Well, here is a mirror of the full 2mb, 74 page PDF. At least until they make me take it down. Oh wait, I'm the admin of that server so I'd have to make myself take it down....
http://netfiles.uiuc.edu/benoc/mirrors/state_techIt's especially interesting to take a look at all of the categories, and not just the overall rankings, in my opinion. And what the heck is the poster thinking, since when is open space or low cost of living important as to whether a state is "best for technology." I'd sooner assume the opposite!
Visit the oldest operating webcam on the internet with human subjects: http://www.mitwebcam.com
Who is General Failure? And why is he reading my disk????
9th in engineering grad programs.
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/grad/rankings/e ng/brief/engrank_brief.php
I know that is top 10 in Computer Science
"There is no teacher but the enemy."-Mazer Rackham
"The only industry I know thats in Texas is the video game industry."
That's because you are stupid.
Massachusets has less people in it than Houston does.
Texas has Austin, Houston, and Dallas/Ft Worth, which all have significant tech corridors producing a hell of a lot more than video games.
The University of Texas at Austin, Texas A&M, and Rice University are all superb schools, and depending on what subject you are talking about, everybit as good in some cases as your vaunted ivy league schools (oops, Rice IS an Ivy League school).
Can't reference your stats for you, but I can tell you that there isn't Jack for jobs here.
Denver (tech center) and CO Springs have some jobs right now, but they are few and far between. Longmont, Fort Collins, Greeley, etc... are absolutely dead. There aren't any tech jobs here right now at all. Not sure how we were number 2 last year and number 3 this year.
Find coupons in Greeley
UT - Austin is tied for 7th currently, with Washington, it is an excellent school.
Also of is Rice University (in Houston), a top 20 school in CS.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I bet if you looked behind the numbers, you'd find Texas dropped solely due to the HP/Compaq "merger" (Capellas was an idiot, and Carly brillian on that one).
But, Adolph, because you asked, there are several good schools in Texas. Yes, certainly, UT-Austin, which is strong in almost any area you choose, but also Texas A&M is no slouch, especially for agrigcultural technology (don't laugh - people gotta eat). Rice University is also a nationally recognized school (including it's computer science program). Baylor and UT both have excellent law schools with very high bar passage rates. Still, all that aside, MIT, Harvard, and UMass are some power hitters that do pretty much put Massachusetts at the top of any list.
Some other comments here had asked what good was Texas for producing doctors: Houston is a major hub for medicine. Undergraduates from all over the world (literally) flock to Baylor University for its pre-med school program. You really can't beat Baylor College of Medicine (not affiliated with Baylor University or the Baylor Healthcare System) and M.D. Anderson Cancer Center is world class for cancer treatment and research. Some people complain about public schools in Texas, but as a product of that system, I'd say they do pretty well especially since Texas has had a lot of immigration in the past two decades or so.
As for high-tech, Austin, Dallas, and Houston are all three very heavy in technology type businesses. IBM has labs in New York (Watson), California (Almaden), and Texas (Austin). (I guess MA is close enough to New York not to get its own.) I think, overall, Tech is #1 or #2 industry in the state. In Austin (800,000+ people in the city proper), when I worked at IBM (99), I believe the largest non-government employers in the city were Dell, IBM, and Motorola. Dallas is home to EDS, and of course, Johnson Space Center is just outside of Houston.
In the area of trade, Texas is important, too. It was the number one exporter of all 50 states in 2002 and 2003 (source here).
I could go on, but I think you get the idea...
/ is the root of
Part of the reason why is that high-tech, biotech, medical, and research undergrads don't have to go somewhere else to get summer internships. They can say in the area and work, and develop a relationship with a company/organization which they may parley into a job come graduation. MIT allows their students to rent dorm rooms over the summer and something like a full third of the undergrad population stays all summer.
-*- Any technology indistinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced -*-
Actually the sales tax in Texas isn't that bad. In fact here in CA I'm paying about the same in property taxes and sales tax that I'd pay there in TX, plus I'm hit with a state income tax that tops out at 9.3% (for now). Not to say CA is the worst---but TX really isn't that bad when all is said and done.
MA and Boston in particular is a great place to live. It's got a really good public transportation system (it's not perfect in any sense but it is actually quite good). It's got all kinds of things to do (sports, entertainment, history, and city-walkability). Is incredibly wired (universities, wireless hotspots, the "technology corridor", etc). Has a lot of good companies headquartered in the reagion and thus plenty of money looking to be invested. And Boston is a vibrant town with a lot of young people with fresh ideas. Put all of that in one place and you have the ingredients for a great place to live, work, and strat a business.
Cost of living here is still quite expensive, unless you want to live in a rathole student apartment or out in the middle of nowhere. Expect to pay around $1000/mo for a decent 2 bedroom apartment. UT Austin is also the biggest school in the country, at last count there were somewhere around 52,000 students here. I used to be a CS major and I can vouch for the program (the EE program is excellent as well.) The liberal arts side of the school is nothing great, but the science and engineering programs are top notch. Not to mention Austin is just an awesome place to live if you're into any sort of outdoor activity (mountain biking, running, hiking, camping, etc.) The climate is relatively mild (winters ~40F, summers ~90F) and there are lots of places to go within a close proximity. I'd live here forever if the job market didn't suck so bad. :)
"how about your highschool system?"
e rr orist.nea/
Houston was widely touted to have a Great school system, along with the rest of Texas. It was a key plank in George W.'s presidential campaign, and part of the impetus for his national "No Child Left Behind" education program. Its also a reason the head of the Houston school system, Rod Paige, is now the Secretary of Education. Of course a year or two later it came out the Houston's stellar graduation rate was due to massive fabrication of the statistics.
http://www.nea.org/neatoday/0310/upfront.html
"Houston school officials recently picked (B) in a frenzied effort to explain the ingenious bit of bookkeeping unveiled by a state audit. Turns out that thousands of students who should have been recorded as drop-outs had been swapped to other categories, such as "transferred" or "moved." Across this school district once led by U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige--the man President George W. Bush boasted had made the Texas school system a model in accountability--revelation of the trickery was beyond embarrassing. A New York Times editorial called the official drop-out numbers "the educational equivalent of Enron's accounting results."
Not long ago Secretary Paige referred to the NEA as a "terrorist" organization:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/EDUCATION/02/23/paige.t
Kind of standard procedure for the Bush administration. Lie, deceive and when caught accuse your critics of being terrorists, unpatriotic, lairs, etc.
@de_machina