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By and large across Michigan and the country community college completion rates are quite low. As detailed in Redesigning America's Community Colleges this largely is a result of how community colleges are designed. For ease of access, not completion. Redesigning America's Community Colleges, as we have explored previously, lays out a detailed playbook on how to redesign a community college…

This post was originally written for and published by Inside Higher Education. They generously gave us permission to publish the post. It lays out reasons why expanding expanding federal Pell grant funding to obtaining short-term certificates may not be good for either students or community colleges. The same cautions apply to Michigan including short-term credentials in its goal of 60…

The hospitality industry is characterized by lots of low-wage workers. E. Tammy Kim, in a New York Times column entitled The Gig Economy is Coming For Your Job, writes about how technology is allowing the hospitality industry to use gig workers to increase the number of low-wage workers. She writes: ... The doormen and bellmen who once summoned cabs for…

Readers of this blog know that at Michigan Future we believe the mission of economic policy should be income based, not employment or economic growth based. The reality is you do not have a good economy––no mater how low the unemployment rate or how high the economic growth rate or stock market––when 43 percent of Michigan households cannot pay for…

We provided participants in our education redesign conference, Outsmarting the Robots with a list of recommended reading, podcast and video. We wanted to share those recommendations more broadly. The list was assembled to include media we found interesting about the nature of work, today and tomorrow, as well as the kind of education/youth development that all kids will need to…