Michigan needs to do a far better job of preparing its citizens for a knowledge-based economy. At the heart of our decades long decline in prosperity compared to the nation is that we ranked thirty fourth in four-year degree attainment.
We need to transform and invest in our entire system of teaching and learning for both children and adults. Education attainment is now by far the most reliable path to the middle class.
Our preparing talent priorities:
- Building a culture that highly values learning and an entrepreneurial spirit and being welcoming to all.
- Ensuring the long-term success of a vibrant and agile higher education system. This means increasing public investments in higher education. Our higher education institutions – particularly the major research institutions – are the most important assets we have to develop the concentration of talent needed in a knowledge-based economy.
- Transforming teaching and learning so that it is aligned with the realities of a flattening world. All of education – from birth to retirement – needs reinvention .
Much of our recent work has been focused on one of the areas that most needs improvement: high school education in Detroit. Starting with helping launch University High School with the Ferndale Public Schools and Lawrence Technological University. And then a high school accelerator which helped open 11 new small, open-enrollment, high-performing high schools in Detroit. The accelerator acted as a third-party intermediary; that is, it provided financial support, training, and direction to founders, principals, teachers and board members of the high schools it worked with. The accelerator work ended June 30, 2016.
Michigan Future Inc. Research Reports
- Pathways to Good Paying Careers – Full report
- Connecting the Urban Poor to Work: A Framework and Strategy for Action – Full report
- Understanding School Shoppers in Detroit – Full report
- Increasing College Graduation Rates for Low-Income, Minority, and First-Gen Students: Lessons Learned from Four Colleges That Are Doing the Work – Full report
- The Reducing Chronic Unemployment Initiative Final Report – Full report
