The steady loss of Kansas’ college graduates to other states is a bothersome trend that reinforces ongoing concerns about the state’s economy.

Last week, Board of Regents President and CEO Blake Flanders addressed the issue at a Board of Regents workshop in Wichita.

In 2014, 47 percent of the people who had earned bachelor’s degrees five years earlier were still employed in Kansas, Flanders said. That was down from 52 percent four years earlier. The trend is applicable at all levels of higher education, including those who earn certificates at a technical college, an associate’s degree at a community college, or a four-year bachelor’s degree from one of the six Regents universities.

Perhaps worse, only 45 percent of people earning master’s degrees and only one-third of those earning doctoral degrees were employed in Kansas in their first year after graduating, according to Board of Regents data.

Among the Board of Regents’ strategic goals is aligning the higher education system with the state’s economic needs. One measurement is the number of graduates who end up getting long-term employment in Kansas.

The question Regents had is whether the decline in graduates remaining in state is the result of a failure of higher education to align with the economic needs of the state or the opposite: the inability of the state’s economy to offer the job, income and quality-of-life opportunities today’s graduates are seeking.

Sadly, it seems the latter is more likely. Population growth, wage growth and job growth in Kansas continue to lag well behind national averages. Business Insider, which ranks state economies, ranked Kansas in its bottom 10 at the end of 2015. State Policy Reports’ Index of State Economic Momentum ranked Kansas 46th, just ahead of Oklahoma, earlier this year.

Simply put, there are better opportunities for college graduates elsewhere. “There is a war for talent nationally,” Flanders said. “And so college graduates are in high demand, and they’re recruited by companies outside of this state.”

It’s good that the Regents are focused on fixing the trend, but the real solution to stopping the leak of Kansas’ college graduates rests with the folks in Topeka. Until the state’s lawmakers admit that the tax policies in place now are hindering, not helping, the state’s economy, Kansas’ brain drain is likely to continue.