Experts:Hawaii
losing its identity

They say steps need to be
taken to ensure that top students
don't leave the island

By Russ Lynch
Star-Bulletin

It's 2003 and 75 percent of Hawaii's high school graduates who went to college on the mainland have opted to stay there forever.

Many have married and had children and that has created a new trend -- their parents are moving to the mainland to be near the grandchildren.

That picture, described by University of Hawaii business professor Nicholas Ordway, was one scenario arising from a panel of experts who were asked to predict what life and business in Hawaii will be like five years from now.

Randall Roth, a UH law professor and editor of "The Price of Paradise" books, agreed with Ordway's view but took it a step further.

"More than a few of us, or our children, have moved away. Those who remain (in 2003) have less of the spirit of aloha than we had in 1998," Roth told yesterday's luncheon meeting of the Building Owners and Managers Association at the Hawaii Prince Hotel.

"Quite a few people from elsewhere will move here. Their life experiences and values are not the same as the people they are replacing," he said.

Roth, one of the authors of the "Broken Trust" essay criticizing the management of Kamehameha Schools/ Bishop Estate, said Hawaii will be even more divided than it is now.

"Increasingly it feels like war, where you are either on this side or the other side," he said.

In 2003, issues will have boiled down to "yes or no" and "them or us," Roth said.

Ordway said there are some things that can be done to reverse the trends, but it will take teamwork. One step would be to improve the University of Hawaii so that the best and brightest students will want to stay in the islands for their higher education, he said.

When Hawaii high school graduates do choose a UH education, "there's only a 20 percent chance that they'll move away," Ordway said.

Ordway drew parallels to the winless UH football team and Hawaii's flat economy.

"We have an organization that has hired outside experts to run it. We have more students from Hawaii playing against us" than are playing for us, he said.

"It's isolated from its constituency."

To stop the "brain drain" and improve the economy, "we have to start working as a team," he said.

Roth said that meanwhile, battle lines are being drawn between the "haves" and the "have-nots." Jumping to 2003, he said: "Many of those who moved away did so to get a good job.

Many of those who moved to Hawaii did so because they have the financial resources" and can afford to move to a beautiful place with a nice climate.

Those people, however, don't care about the Hawaii economy because they're independent of it, Roth added.

The panel discussion wasn't all doom and gloom.

Real estate expert Michael Sklarz, senior vice president and director of research at Prudential Locations Inc., also serves on the Council on Revenues that makes five-year estimates of the state's financial picture.

That group is predicting a construction industry recovery starting next year that will be in full effect by 2003, Sklarz said.

Real estate activity will be 25-to-50 percent greater than it is in 1998, Sklarz said, with both prices and volume at record levels.

Personal incomes look "surprisingly up-line" for 2003, he said, and that year Hawaii should get a record 7.5 million tourists.

Other speakers were Judith Hughes, dean of arts and humanities at the University of Hawaii; Richard Halloran, a free-lance writer and Asia expert; Barbara Okamoto, research director at the Hawaii Visitors & Convention Bureau; and Allen Doane, chief executive officer of Alexander & Baldwin Inc.