Every autumn, the more than 20,000 students attending Cornell University and Ithaca College return to Ithaca for top-notch educations. They spend their time here learning the skills they will need to have a successful career and then move away after graduation to fulfill their dreams in Los Angeles or Manhattan before scuttling broke back to their parents.

The phenomenon of students vacating educational centers, called “Brain Drain,” leaves communities across the country without a permanent population of younger people to support and expand the local economy.

But a new study by the city of Ithaca shows that Ithaca has a growing population of returning graduates, implying that maybe those “Brain Drain” trends are about to reverse.

The study, headed by Tompkins County President of Relocation Research Brian Tiltman, found that on any given weekend, there are roughly 700 Ithaca College graduates visiting their old college town and imposing on old friends, a 28 percent increase from 2005.

“But that’s just the tip of the iceberg,” Tiltman said. “The numbers skyrocket during finals weekend. We’ve counted well over 2,000 graduates.”

Tiltman says other studies have overlooked these numbers because the visiting graduates don’t appear on census reports. But if the sociological study is accurate, the actual number of people supporting the Ithaca economy and/or staying with friends for just a night or two is much greater than previously speculated.

“And that’s not even counting surprise visits from your mom on the night you were supposed to have that big date,” Tiltman said.

Some graduates even try to make dropping by a regular occurrence. Though Thomas R. Laggard graduated in 1997 with a degree in creative writing and now resides in Pennsylvania with his grandmother, he said he has visited Ithaca about a “billion freaking times.”

“I love to see all the houses and dorms I’ve crashed in over the years,” Laggard said. “Sometimes I miss the people I actually went to school with, but every time I come here I meet someone new and unsuspecting to give me a place to sleep and a hot meal and some shoes.”

Even with people like Laggard working to solve the “Brain Drain” problem, Tiltman says Ithaca still has a long way to go.

“The next step is to create the kind of environment where these idealistic young adults can see that there is nothing for them in the real world but pain and failure. If we can accomplish that, they will be more likely to stick to what is safe and familiar and never move away from Ithaca.”

It would seem the answer to the problem is an easy one: Ithaca needs to show graduates what it wants them to think it has to offer.