Late last year, Stanford economist Raj Chetty and colleagues published an important set of data that measured just how many Americans achieve the American dream. They define the American dream as the ideal that a child will earn more money,…
The Bureau of Labor Statistics recently released data on unemployment and average wage by education attainment for 2012. As their education pays chart (below) demonstrates the evidence is overwhelming that those with a four year degree or more work and…
Theme: Quality education matters most Michigan––any many other states––have been slashing higher education funding for the last decade. It has been viewed as something we can't afford in hard economic times. A luxury that you invest in when times are…
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…
Great column in Dome Magazine by Glen Mroz, the terrific President of Michigan Tech. Mroz makes the case that cutting higher education funding is harmful to the Michigan economy. First the facts. State appropriations to higher education are down 35%…
This is the first of a series of posts on higher education. As many of you know, in our 2006 A New Agenda for a New Michigan, we argued to recreate a high prosperity Michigan, maintaing a quality and agile…
Recently Thom Linn sent me the QS World University Rankings. Why? Because the University of Michigan is ranked as the 15th best university in the world. Turns out the QS rankings are one of three global higher ed rankings that…
Governor Snyder in his State of the State address announced the state would no longer pick winners and losers. The way he proposed to implement that was by expanding eligibility for subsidies from the state's Twenty First Century Jobs Fund…
A terrific editorial from Nolan Finley in the Sunday Detroit News. Entitled "The reason why we're poorer", Finley lays out, as well as we ever have, the connection between education attainment and per capita income. He clearly understands in an…
Every time the state gets into financial difficulty there are calls for some kind of centralization of the state's higher education system. Led by the business community and editorial writers. It's a bad idea! Hard to figure out since both…