Preparing for a career not a first job
This is a rerun of a 2013 post. I thought it worth rerunning because it describes well how one puts together a successful forty-year career in an economy where the nature of work is constantly changing. It is about a Michigan State student developing in Heather McGowan’s framing her career success operating system, not a […]
How important are standardized test scores to life outcomes?
Last week, the Equality of Opportunity Project, led by Stanford economist Raj Chetty, released another study in their ongoing series on mobility in America. This one was particularly sobering. The headline: black males raised in wealthy households (the top quintile of household incomes), are more likely to be poor as adults than they are to […]
Are we Michissippi?
Another list of economic well being that you don’t want to be on that Michigan is on. This one comes from Harvard University economists Benjamin Austin, Edward Glaeser, and Lawrence Summers. They map the growth in the share of men who are not working across major regions of the United States, revealing that the share of […]
Shaping Our Future Together: Talent, Enthusiasm, Career Rock-climbing & Innovation History
This blog is authored by Lucie Howell, Director of Learning and Engagement at The Henry Ford. We asked Lucie to author a post to help readers understand how different teaching and learning looks like when it is designed to prepare students to be career rock climbers rather than climbing a career ladder. These past few […]
No talent, no transit, no Amazon
So Grand Rapids offered Amazon up to $2 billion in tax breaks to locate their HQ2 in their region. As John Gallagher points out in a Detroit Free Press article on the topic, big tax breaks were offered across the nation. What is more noteworthy in Gallagher’s article are the comments by Birgit Klohs, metro […]
The real message from the Marshall Plan for Talent? Get a four-year degree
The Marshall Plan for Talent came with an implicit message to Michigan high school students: four-year degrees aren’t necessary to get ahead in tomorrow’s economy. Billed as a revolutionary approach to education, Governor Snyder envisions a competency-based system heavy on short-term credentials and light on four-year degrees. In an interview with Crain’s about the plan […]
Google, Snyder and McGowan on essential skills
In her Linkedin column Heather E. McGowan calls for a transformation of the mission of education. From one that prepares people for a job to one that prepares people for continuous job loss. Largely because of machines increasingly doing the work now done by humans, we are now in an economy where losing a job will […]
The Governor is right that talent is a big issue. He’s wrong about how to solve it.
Reading the guest commentary Governor Snyder penned for Bridge Magazine explaining the ideas behind his Marshall Plan for Talent was like riding a roller coaster. It’s clear Governor Snyder understands that the world of work has fundamentally changed and that Michigan’s education system has failed to adapt. He rightly asserts that the rate of change […]
California: Higher taxes and surging
Turns out that California since 2010 has contributed 20 percent of the country’s GDP growth with 12 percent of the country’s population. As we explored previously this growth occurred primarily after California passed a major tax increase in 2012. And was written off as in permanent decline by many during the Great Recession. Conventional wisdom had […]