Apart from graduating from Temple with bachelor’s degrees this spring, Matthew Fenty, a biophysics major from suburban Bucks County, Pa., and Erinn Jones, a public relations major from Southern California, would seem to have little in common.

Yet they share more than the seal on their diplomas: Like many of their Temple classmates, they’ve decided to stick around after graduation to live and work in Philadelphia.

And they’re not alone. Thousands of Temple grads will be staying in town to start their careers, fulfilling a goal that many of them had set years before graduating.

“I always wanted to work in Philadelphia,” said Fenty, who will be starting a job as a research technician at a magnetic resonance imaging laboratory in June.

“About 75 percent of my friends either already work in the Philadelphia area or are going to work here when they graduate.”

According to Temple surveys, increasing numbers of Temple students say that they hope to stay in Philadelphia to live and work after earning their degrees. In 2006, 64 percent of surveyed Temple students said that “after graduation, I will want to live and/or work in the Philadelphia area” — up from 57 percent in 2004.

The surge in the percentage of students hoping to stay in the Philadelphia area is the largest increase since 2004 among more than 65 issues of importance to students that survey participants were asked to rate.

Given Temple’s long history of serving students from Greater Philadelphia, including many commuters, the fact that large numbers of Temple students intend to stay in town isn’t a surprise. More than any other institution, Temple has been the region’s source for educated workers: About one in every eight college-educated people who live in Philadelphia or the four surrounding Pennsylvania counties has at least one Temple degree.

Yet the unprecedented increase in students who dream of starting their post-graduation lives in Philadelphia is happening at the very same time that an unprecedented percentage of Temple undergraduates are from outside the region. In fall 2006, 17 percent of freshmen and transfer students were from parts of Pennsylvania outside Philadelphia and its suburbs (up from 9 percent in fall 1998) and 23 percent were from other states (up from 17 percent in fall 1998).

It’s all sweet music to the ears of Philadelphia area business leaders who have been working to fight “brain drain,” the exodus of graduates from hometowns near and far who’ve earned their degrees at local institutions. The problem is particularly acute in Philadelphia, a metropolitan area with a shrinking, aging population and a workforce that is relatively uneducated. According to the Knowledge Industry Partnership, a coalition of local business, government, civic and higher education leaders, only 37 percent of residents in the Philadelphia area have a college degree or currently are enrolled in school — significantly less than the Boston or San Francisco Bay areas, where half or more of the population is college-educated.

“This isn’t about brain drain, it’s about brain gain,” said Steve Wray, executive director of the Economy League of Greater Philadelphia, the nonprofit organization that incubated KIP. “Talent is the name of the game, so the more talented young people we can convince that Philadelphia is a great place to work, the better for Philadelphia. The future of companies here depends on our ability to attract a steady stream of educated young people. That’s why Temple’s success and the region’s success are inextricably linked.”

The reasons that graduates cite for their decision to stay in Philadelphia to live and work are as varied as their majors. For Matthew Fenty, the region’s position as a biomedical research hot spot was a factor.

“The job market influenced my decision to go to school here,” Fenty said. “I’ve always kept abreast of what’s going on in the city, and even before I came to Temple I knew that Philadelphia was one of the leading areas in the country for biomedical research.”

To Erinn Jones, who does public relations work for local radio stations, Philadelphia’s market size is part of the attraction — and the number of high-ranking and influential graduates of Temple’s School of Communications and Theater in the communications and media sector of Philadelphia’s economy didn’t hurt.

“My goal has been to work in promotions in the radio industry, and the fact that Philadelphia is the No. 6 media market is exciting, so I can’t describe how blessed I feel to get my job,” Jones said. “My boss went to Temple. The first thing he asked in the interview was ‘How’s Temple?’ That made the interview go better.”

Other students’ decisions to stay in town are motivated by a desire to give back to the city.

“I love Philadelphia,” said Matthew Scannapieco, a double major in Greek and Roman classics and political science from suburban Drexel Hill, Pa., who will be teaching at his alma mater, St. Joseph’s Preparatory School, in North Philadelphia. “I don’t see myself going anywhere soon. The migration out of the city of our best teachers and principals is hurting our city and our schools.”

But Kenny Watson, a 43-year-old elementary education/special education major and retired U.S. Army Sgt. 1st Class from rural Alabama, may have the most convincing answer to people from home or his former military posts when they ask, often incredulously, why he’s choosing to live in Philadelphia and work in the city’s public schools.

“I love the public transportation, the concerts, the museums and the sports,” he said, “but when people ask me why I moved to a city like Philadelphia, I tell them I walk my dog past Independence Mall and drive my bike past Betsy Ross’ house. You can’t find that in Dallas or Atlanta.”