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At least one New Jersey newspaper is worried about what will happen to New Jersey if its future leaders continue to leave the state.

An editorial in Friday morning’s The Press of Atlantic City urged government officials to work together at “an unprecedented level” to stem the “loss of future families, workers and leaders, which will undermine our ability to compete for new businesses.”

Citing NJBIA’s Higher Education Task Force report, the Press noted that the Garden had a net loss of 183,591 residents ages 18 to 34 between 2007 and 2016. It also endorsed a number of the task force’s recommendations, including investments in career and technical education, getting businesses more involved in job-training programs, and expanding offerings at community colleges.

But those are not enough.

“Above all, education must be affordable, and right now, in New Jersey, it’s not,” the Press states. “The state has the fourth-highest tuition and fees in the country. That issue is a huge factor in driving students to get their college education elsewhere. And as we’ve seen, once they move, it’s harder to get them to come back.”

Read more.

An update to NJBIA’s Postsecondary Education Task Force report, The Education Equation, was released last month. It showed that college-age adults, ages 18 to 24, accounted for nearly 60 percent of young adult outflow from New Jersey, but only 36 percent of young adult inflow during the same time span.