Support for KPBS comes from the child's primary school. Now accepting kindergarten through eighth grade applications for fall 2016. You can schedule a tour for children become winners, leaders, and creative problem solvers. More about their winning community at T cps.or. 2016 marks the 10th anniversary of one book one San Diego. My name is Randy Clark. We believe in the power of a good book. The nomination process for the new selection begins in paper. To find out more, visit KPBS.org, now let's get reading. For more on the stories you hear on KPBS you can like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter and visit us at For more on the stories you hear on KPBS you can like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter and visit us@KPBS.org. This is midday edition. We all know that San Diego has a great reputation in the tech industry. If you talk about biotech in the health sciences skills, the answer is yes. According to research done by the economic development organization our reputation with other righteous of the tech industry is not great. Tech giants think San Diego is a nice place to visit but they don't want to set up shop there. Joining me, Mark Cafferty, president and CEO, San Diego Regional Economic Development Corporation and Michael Lipkin, reporter, San Diego Business Journal. The remarkable thing is what people don't know about San Diego. When you look at broad data from a top perspective you could argue that San Diego holds its own with almost any market. And all the major tech markets we have a very solid comfortable position. But people don't know that so they make assumptions about San Diego and we hope the study is getting the data out there. What is such as to they may? That San Diego is a beautiful place to visit. They probably think defense is a critical part of our economy which it is. When you look at how diverse the tech sector is, it's made up of a lot of small businesses. We're trying to make sure we turn that into a positive. What cities are our main competitors? San Francisco and Silicon Valley. Austyn, Denver, places like Burj Virginia and North Carolina. What do they have that we don't? Some have large computer, like Dell. They have a lower cost of living which is very attractive. If you want to set up human resources outpost, you probably won't want to come to San Diego where real estate and cost of living is very high. What about the percentage of residents who hold college degrees? Compared to the nation San Diego competes very well in that area. When you look at the top 10, we are eight of those. We are towards the bottom of the ranking. And someplace like San Jose, 40%. We have sun and beaches. Does that count for anything? Is not insignificant. Now as we have talent discussions, there's a water base of how you want to market the lifestyle of the region to young people. With its urban, laid-back outdoors, or combination. All of these factor into space decisions that a new generation of workers make. Getting businesses in the center of that to embrace that and help us market that is part of the package. It is something we have started to do and we want to do more aggressively. Apparently we have had some impressive advances in the number of science and tech is in recent years. We're going faster than most of our peers. To that previous points about sunshine and beaches, it seems like it could be a great ancillary benefits. When they are making an multimillion dollar decision to set up an engineering office here, they are focused on tech talent. We find the quality of education is very strong across the region and collaboratively with universities we have to project that were aggressively and in a better way. If you listen to them yesterday, it all comes down to talent. What matters most is the pipeline of that talent that can come out of our universities continue to help them grow. We had a boost of thousands of science and Tech graduates recently. Are they staying in San Diego? I was talking to an executive who said University of California San Diego students -- they get more of their employees from there than any other school but more students from there turned down offers because they would rather go somewhere else. Why? Because of salary? I don't think that's necessarily the concern. The consumer facing brands may want to work for Facebook more than QUALCOMM. Any idea why more graduates don't stay? When you look at the data, we have to do a better job of keeping the best and brightest here. There is suspicion of maybe not the first job, but the second job. If things don't work out our choose to move on, do they note 10 or 12 other brands they could think of they would jump to? If they are in biotechnology, they probably do. That is something that you in to their thoughts on San Diego. We want to give them the idea that while those big wins me know he here, there are hundreds of companies that may still be changing the world here. We're talking about the idea of there are a bunch a similar tech industries in San Diego. People could go back and forth and find other jobs without having to move out. You have seen that in the biotech sector. When company is down and another seems to be up so the talents days. You see an active network leaves San Diego, you don't realize the people that created active network are here investing in five or six new companies. I imagine that every city needs to be a high-tech hub. Why do we need big firms to set up in San Diego? I'm not sure we need it. If a Google or Facebook set up shop, that would be a tremendous for the city. I think we have a very diverse technology sector. We are one of the national leaders in health and life sciences. I don't necessarily think we need firms, there's a lot of talent and cheaper real estate elsewhere in the country. I thought Michael's article was correct. Perception is everything. If you have two minutes to make the first impression and they believe San Diego is something, we have to figure out how to get the more across to them. All the different trade associations we work with our thinking that because at the end of the day every discussion always starts or ends with talent. We need to make sure we change that if it's our weakness. I've been talking with Mark Cafferty, president and CEO, San Diego Regional Economic Development Corporation and Michael Lipkin, reporter, San Diego Business Journal. Thank you very much.
When big tech companies like Google and Facebook are asked to consider locating offices in San Diego, they decline. Why?
They say San Diego’s workforce lacks the scientific, engineering and tech talent they need. To the top tech firms, it seems San Diego is in the minor leagues when it comes to having the scientific and engineering talent in Seattle, San Francisco and San Jose.
Attempting to sell these firms on the glories of San Diego's weather and beaches falls flat, said John Kilroy, CEO of Kilroy Realty Group, who was quoted in an interview last month for the San Diego Business Journal. Another Kilroy executive pointed out that Seattle is a tech hub despite more than 200 days a year of rain.
The chief — and surprising — reason is education. A recent study by the San Diego Regional Economic Development Corp. found that San Diego ranked third lowest among its peers for its share of adults with college degrees — 37 percent. San Francisco, Austin, Baltimore, Seattle and Denver all ranked higher. In San Jose, 48 percent of adults 25 or older have a college degree.
But the report documents that San Diego is catching up rapidly. In 2014, the area added some 72,500 degree holders to the workforce. Further, San Diego is a leader in biotech, with an active and growing biotech hub near UC San Diego.
“When you actually look at the raw data from a talent perspective, you can see that San Diego holds its own with almost any market,” Mark Cafferty, president and CEO of the Economic Development Corp. told KPBS Midday Edition on Tuesday.
