DURHAM – The expression ‘best and brightest’ is overused – but at the NC School of Science and Mathematics, it really does apply.

From NCSSM’s class of 2016 alone, six graduates went to MIT, five to Yale, four to Stanford, six to Cornell.

From one graduating class.

In the accompanying video, NCSSM Chancellor Todd Roberts says it’s important to keep as many of those graduates as possible in North Carolina.

From 2004-2010, NCSSM graduates received grants to cover 100% of their tuition if they attended an institution in the University of North Carolina System.  While the tuition grants were available, 75-77% of NCSSM graduates went to UNC System schools.

The General Assembly ended the grants in 2011.  Now, while a large number of NCSSM grads still go to UNC System schools, the percentage has shrunken to 58%.  Officials with the school and the UNC System would like the legislature to restore the grants.

“It’s important to retain talent in the state,” Roberts says.  “We’ve seen clearly from a statistical standpoint that the tuition grant was an incentive for students to stay in North Carolina and go to UNC System schools – it was an 18-20% difference in the number of our graduates that stayed in the system.

“The state makes considerable investment in the students when they come to Science & Math, and it’s an opportunity to leverage that investment just a little bit more to keep them in state.”