Tyrone Mays, 52, an unemployed laborer from South Philadelphia with a back injury, is one of the dropouts.

He carries a lifetime of shattered dreams and one glorious memory - of the few months he spent attending college in the early 1980s.

Besides a high rate of college dropouts - 16.3 percent compared with 13.1 percent who have earned only a bachelor's degree - the city's proportion of total college graduates among its residents is relatively low - about 20 percent, when graduate degrees are added.

That is compared with a total of more than 50 percent in Seattle.

A new program - being introduced officially this week - intends to change this long-term Philadelphia problem by steering college dropouts back to the groves of academe.

"If we have 83 colleges and 300,000 students - isn't this like modern-day Athens?" asked David Thornburgh, a Philadelphia economist. "We have this rich environment. Shouldn't we be at the top?"

To the contrary, Philadelphia's 1-5 ratio puts it in the bottom quarter of the nation's 100 largest cities, well behind Boston, Chicago and Washington, according to U.S. Census statistics for 2006.

And that makes life difficult for people such as Elizabeth Wasserman-Riley, a human resources executive at the University of Pennsylvania Health System.

This year, the health system plans to expand national recruiting efforts.

"Our demand is increasing for certain job categories, but the supply isn't there," she said. "If the supply doesn't increase regionally, that necessitates us going outside our marketplace."

It also makes life difficult for Thomas Morr, chief executive officer of Select Greater Philadelphia, an arm of the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce charged with selling the region as a location for business.

"When we survey businesspeople about what is important about making a location decision, the first thing on the list is the business opportunity," he said. "But right after that is, 'Can we find the people we need to do what we need to do?' "

Morr finds it easier to sell the region than the city when it comes to workforce education levels.

With about one-third of residents aged 25 to 64 holding bachelor's degrees or more, the region ranks close to the top quarter among the nation's 100 largest metro areas - on par with greater Chicago and Seattle.

But college graduates make up an even bigger group - about 45 percent - in the Boston and Washington regions.

"If they are just looking at Philadelphia County, they may not even call us," Morr said.

Morr and Wasserman-Riley have their problems, but people like Mays face the biggest challenge.

They are not earning what they could. They are not upgrading their cars, their televisions, or their homes - all drivers of the economy. And they are not paying the taxes they would in higher-paying jobs.

"There's a total ripple effect for disposable income," said the city's acting commerce director Duane Bumb.