A roadmap for supporting higher education
We have long argued that the state needs to reverse recent trends of under-investing in colleges, universities and community colleges. Michigan spent decades building a world-class systems of higher education. The system is arguably the most import asset the state has to develop the concentration of talent Michigan needs to be successful in the knowledge-based […]
Taking talent seriously in Lansing
“Either we get younger and better educated or we get poorer” is the slide we close all our presentations with. It captures our core belief that talent is the asset that matters most to Michigan’s future prosperity. And that because recent college graduates are the most mobile group in the country that where they decide […]
Pessimistic non college educated whites
Ron Brownstein has a really insightful article on Yahoo! News entitled Why the white working class is alienated, pessimistic. Brownstein reports on a new survey by Pew Charitable Trusts’ Economic Mobility Project. What the research found is that non college educated whites are, by far, the least optimistic group about America’s economic future. The most optimistic […]
The Michigan Future approach to higher education
For the last month or so most of my posts have been about higher education. For us it is a top economic development priority. This is a long standing belief of ours. In a world where the defining characteristic of prosperous places increasingly is human capital we believe that the the single most important thing […]
Business following talent
Fascinating New York Times article on UBS entitled Regretting Move, Bank May Return to Manhattan. Its about UBS considering moving back to Manhattan because they can’t attract talent to their huge suburban Connecticut trading operations. As the Times writes: …UBS is having buyer’s remorse. It turns out that a suburban location has become a liability […]
Quality of place in the news
All of a sudden a lot of media reports on the importance of creating quality of place – particularly vibrant central cities – in growing the Michigan economy. Hopefully this media attention is a harbinger of policy maker attention. Because it sure isn’t on Lansing’s priority list at the moment. (If it ever has been!) […]
Hindering new knowledge creation
Back to our thought experiment on what others would offer if the University of Michigan decided it was willing to locate all or parts of its operations anyplace on the planet. In my previous post we established the dollar amount offered would be off the charts. And that most of what Lansing is focused on […]
Worth checking out
Some interesting items that are worth checking out: • CNN did a terrific report on high tech job growth in metro Detroit. Going so far as to ask whether Detroit is the new Silicon Valley. Yes dead and gone Detroit! Not to mention the state with the worse business tax in America that drives away […]
American workers as the priority II
Mohamed El-Erian is the CEO of PIMCO, the huge California based money management firm. He recently wrote a column for Project Syndicate entitled Sleepwalking through America’s Unemployment Crisis. Worth reading. El-Erian writes: The country now has an unemployment problem that is large in magnitude and increasingly structural in nature. … This is much more than a problem […]
American workers as the priority
An objective assessment would almost certainly reach the conclusion that American businesses are much better positioned to do well in a flattening world than American workers. Despite that at both the state and national level our policy focus is on helping companies compete. This despite record corporate profits both before and after the Great Recession. […]