This post was originally published in October 2016. It is arguably more relevant today than then. As Farhad Manjoo details in a recent New York Times column coding will not be a high-paid occupation for much longer. As Kim Trent made clear in this post technical/occupation specific skills are not foundational to successful forty-year careers. That learning how to code is not the same as learning “skills like the ability to communicate, think critically, collaborate and create become increasingly vital for future careers. These are all skills that students hone in college.” 

At the turn of the 20th century, two iconic leaders framed the debate about education in the black community: Harvard-trained intellectual and activist W.E.B. Dubois, who thought a classical education would best equip African Americans for lifelong success and Booker T. Washington, the most famous black man of the era and a staunch advocate of vocational education for African Americans.

I’ll pause here and confess that I have always been on Team DuBois, believing – as he did – that a college education is the black community’s most direct path to economic stability and intellectual advancement. That said, I will also concede that in the early 1900s, few African Americans could afford the luxury of a college education and that opportunities for black workers with a trade were plentiful.

My own paternal great-grandfather moved to Detroit in 1912 and landed a plum job as a skilled tradesman at Ford Motor Company. Both his son – my grandfather – and my uncle later comfortably raised families with good skilled trade jobs at Ford. My maternal grandfather, meanwhile, made a solid living as a welder at Detroit auto companies.

Trade jobs are not encouraging future careers

There’s no doubt that skilled trades jobs were a boon for African Americans in the 20th century. But this is 2016, and futurists have predicted that globalization and automation will make modern workers with transferable skills more valuable to employers. Skills like the ability to communicate, think critically, collaborate and create become increasingly vital for future careers. These are all skills that students hone in college.

That’s why I am highly skeptical of Rooted School, a high school that Jonathan Johnson proposed in New Orleans. The founder hopes to teach students skills like coding and software development so they can skip college and instead begin “high-paying” jobs right after high school. Johnson, who is still raising money to launch the school in 2017, told The Hechinger Report that he designed the school to diversify the ranks of the tech industry.

On its face, Johnson’s pitch may sound appealing. After all, tech jobs are high growth right now; an 18-year-old won’t sneeze at a $16 an hour wage for a coding job.

But mounting evidence shows that narrow educational schemes are the wrong path to prepare for ever-evolving 21st century careers. Today’s booming job field can be tomorrow’s career wasteland and workers who have only been trained to do one thing can find themselves out in the cold. For example, a 2015 Medium.com essay predicts the demise of software engineers. Dan Auerbach, a well-renowned software engineer himself, states that the increasing accessibility of software engineering platforms and the growing capability of software to create software will make human software engineers obsolete by 2060.

Transferable skills for a future career

There will undoubtedly be some who will think my view is elitist. Perhaps this is not surprising since I work for an organization that has consistently pushed higher education as a platform for life and career success. Not to mention that I’m a board member for a four-year university.

The truth is that I have deep respect for anyone who gets up every day to make an honest living. But I also think it is great folly to steer black children into narrow training for jobs that may or may not exist over the span of their careers instead of giving them broad skills that will help them adapt to changing work landscapes.

There’s a reason you rarely hear arguments for vocational education in wealthy suburban districts and it’s not because the parents there don’t want their children to succeed. Quite the opposite! Those districts offer college preparatory curricula because they know that in a rapidly-evolving economy, transferable skills are desirable not just to secure a short-term job but to build a lifelong career.

Encouraging future careers through educational reform

I recently re-watched a video of a panel discussion about the impact of educational reform on anti-poverty agendas that was sponsored by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute in 2014. Some of the panel’s speakers lifted up vocational education as a poverty eradication tool and wondered whether if it is unwise to continue to advocate for college prep curricula for all high schools.

On the panel, I found a kindred spirit in famed educator and civil rights activist Howard Fuller, who expressed his belief that all students should be given a rigorous secondary education that will prepare them to succeed in college and whatever career they choose. Like me, Fuller is skeptical of schools that track students into jobs instead of giving them access to a wide range of choices.

“Most of the people who talk about ‘kids don’t need to go to college,’ hell, they went to college,” Fuller said. “That’s where my problem starts right there. Why is it that it was ok for you [to go to college] but for these low-income kids it’s ‘all of y’all can’t go to college?’”

Why, indeed.

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America has always billed itself as a land of opportunity, where anyone with grit and a dream could succeed. Perhaps because my ancestors were slaves, I have always been aware of the American Dream’s invisible asterisk. In ways big and small, this country has always given spoken and unspoken preferences to some and thrown up visible and invisible roadblocks for others.

In a recent column David Brooks of the New York Times explores how modern upper middle class and wealthy families – terrified that the wage stagnation and shrinking job options that have dogged less affluent Americans could threaten their children – have become fanatical about building exclusive networks to protect opportunity for their children. “So what?” you may be thinking and Brooks admits that the instinct for parents with means to give their children a leg up is natural. But Brooks accuses modern wealthy parents of fortifying structural barriers that are specifically designed to lock less affluent children out of opportunities to thrive.

Brooks cites Dream Hoarders:How the American Upper Middle Class Is Leaving Everyone Else in the Dust, Why That Is a Problem, and What to Do about It, a recently-published book by Richard Reeves of the Brookings Institution. Reeves believes that housing and construction policies that effectively wall off the rich from their less affluent neighbors is the most serious threat to America’s standing as a nation where equal opportunity is a sacred value. Reeves believes educational inequality is another serious threat. Beyond the obvious educational advantages that accrue to wealthy people such as access to strong schools with great teachers and impressive resources, affluent students also have access to college application-boosting activities such as international travel and unpaid internships.

Brooks: “It’s no wonder that 70 percent of the students in the nation’s 200 most competitive schools come from the top quarter of the income distribution. With their admissions criteria, America’s elite colleges sit atop gigantic mountains of privilege, and then with their scholarship policies they salve their consciences by offering teeny step ladders for everybody else.”

When Michigan Future introduced our first-ever policy agenda earlier this year, we argued that if Michigan is to ever return to prosperity, policy makers need to focus on strategies that raise living standards for all Michiganders. It’s important because while the Big Three automakers have returned to prosperity, Michigan families have not. Michigan currently ranks 32nd in the nation for per capita income and according to an April 2017 report by the United Ways of Michigan, 40 percent of Michigan households cannot afford to pay for basic needs. Now more than ever, state lawmakers should be laser focused on strategies to give more Michigan families access to opportunity and prosperity.

One strategy to bridge the gulf between haves and have-nots in Michigan is by introducing inclusive zoning policies with the goal of stimulating economic diversity in Michigan’s cities, towns and school districts. Michigan also needs to boost birth-through-college educational attainment for all students, not just those who are educated in affluent suburban or private schools. Most importantly, our leaders need to demonstrate that they care that current policies are leaving large segments of Michiganders behind.

No one is telling wealthy parents that they should stop looking out for the interests of their children. But Michigan’s standing as a place where families want to live and businesses want to grow will continue to be under pressure unless policy makers leverage strategies that put opportunity within the reach of all Michiganders.

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Princeton University economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton blame so-called “deaths of despair”- suicides, drug overdoses and alcohol-related health challenges – for a spike in midlife mortality rates among white men and women who don’t have a college degree. Meanwhile, the rates for these deaths are falling for whites who hold a college degree. For example, the rate of 50- to 54-year-old men who are college graduates is 243 per 100,000 compared to 867 per 100,000 for men who don’t hold a degree.

The researchers theorize that the elimination of jobs for men who don’t have college degrees due to automation and globalization have led to weakened social ties and more depression. As a result, problems such as substance abuse and risky behaviors have exploded.

In a recent Chronicle of Higher Education article, authors Sarah Brown and Karin Fischer take a fascinating look at the connection between health disparities and low educational attainment in the “Bootheel” region of Missouri, where poorly-educated whites are feeling the brunt of both economic deprivation and rampant health challenges. While some assume that the health disparities that separate poor whites in this battered region from their better educated neighbors are based in economics, the authors found there is more at stake.

“Better-educated people live in less-polluted areas, trust more in science, and don’t as frequently engage in risky behaviors. Have a college degree and you’re more likely to wear a seat belt and change the batteries in your smoke alarm.”

In other words, the critical thinking skills that are sharpened by a college education may help college graduates better synthesize information about the consequences of poor health choices. In addition to the “deaths of despair” examined by Case and Deaton, poorly educated people are more likely to succumb to chronic diseases. For example, Brown and Fisher cite a study that found that middle aged adults who didn’t finish high school were twice as likely to have a heart attack than those with a college degree.

For many years, higher education has been acknowledged as the most reliable engine of social mobility. However, Michigan’s leaders have defunded higher education, placing the burden for college tuition on students and their families, a move that has made college less affordable for those who need it most.

That’s why in Michigan Future Inc.’s first-ever policy agenda, we recommend three policy levers to raise household income for Michigan citizens: boosting education from birth through college; creating dynamic communities that are attractive to talented workers and creating shared prosperity for those who will find themselves left behind by workplaces that are increasingly reliant on machines.

We strongly believe that increasing the number of four-year degree holders in Michigan is the most effective strategy to boost household income, but we are equally convinced that there needs to be a coherent strategy to offer meaningful state assistance to those who have been left behind by an increasingly knowledge-based economy. The very lives of Michigan citizens may be at stake.

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There is ample evidence of the correlation between a state’s college attainment and per capita income. Of the top 15 American states for per capita income, 12 are also among the top 15 for college attainment. The remaining three top states for per capita income hold vast energy resources that boost the state’s economy.

While higher education has long been recognized as the most important driver of upward mobility, modern researchers have noted there is a widening class-based degree attainment gap. Stanford professor Raj Chetty’s research shows that while sixty percent of 25-year-olds from the top fifth of income distribution hold bachelor’s degree, only one-third of 25-year-olds from the next 40 percent are four-year college graduates and only 10 percent of that age cohort from the bottom 40 percent hold bachelor’s degrees.

The head start that upper income students receive includes more and better access to early admissions and other admission preferences like legacy status; merit-based scholarships that reward them for access to quality K-12 educational opportunity and a culture that helps them easily navigate the byzantine application and financial aid processes that can be a real barrier for first-generation college attendees.

Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Richard V. Reeves’ 2017 book Dream Hoarders: How the American Upper Middle Class Is Leaving Everyone Else in the Dust, Why That Is a Problem, and What to Do About It outlines the many ways that class separation is an existential threat to the American Dream. Reeves posits that the gulf between upper middle class and every economic class below them threatens America’s long-standing reputation as a meritocracy, an idea he presented in a recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education. He writes:

Although many Americans pride themselves on living in a classless society, there is a growing class separation, especially between the upper middle class and the majority. The divide can be seen in income trends, wealth gaps, neighborhood quality, health, life expectancy and so on. But the most potent symbol of upper-middle class separation is the elite university.

Reeves describes elite universities with voracious appetites for wealthy students whose parents can comfortably pay full tuition. In the push to attract well-heeled students, efforts to expand the economic diversity of student bodies have often been tossed aside.

Reeves suggests three strategies to close the income college attainment gap:

1. Simplifying the application process. Upper income students have access to college-educated parents, better college. Non-affluent students are much less likely to navigate the complexities of the college application process as easily as their wealthier peers. Reeves also suggests that schools re-think programs such as early admissions, which give affluent students who aren’t reliant on financial aid decisions the upper hand.
2. Re-think merit scholarships: Colleges started offering modest merit-based scholarships to wealthy students in the 1990s, hoping to attract parents who could afford to pay most of tuition costs. Now the scholarships have become so common that they limit resources available for students with greater financial needs. (Michigan is uniquely awful on this front, using federal Temporary Aid to Needy Families dollars that are intended to support families who need financial support to meet basic needs to fund state merit scholarships to families who could easily afford tuition.)
3. Widening admissions criteria: Reeves argues that colleges must use innovative strategies to find talented potential applicants from disadvantaged economic groups. He urges colleges to look at how British universities consider “contextual data” to give a leg up to low income students from struggling schools or by giving preferences to applicants from low income zip codes, even those with lower standardized test scores or GPAs.

The ideas that Reeves has promoted are provocative and will likely face significant backlash from the wealthy and well-connected families who benefit from the status quo. But it’s an important debate to have. We need to decide whether we are comfortable with higher education that instead of being an engine of upward mobility is a solidifier of economic castes. For the sake of our state and our country, I hope we are not.

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At Advancing Macomb’s recent annual meeting, the group spotlighted its efforts to pitch the county’s 12,000 acres of parklands and 89.34 square miles of waterways. The idea is to attract workers and companies to locate in the county because it’s an exciting place to live and explore.

We at Michigan Future Inc. believe that placemaking is an important and often-ignored policy lever that can help build prosperity in our state. Highly mobile millennial workers often make decisions about where they locate based on a community’s amenities and assets. As we state in our first-ever policy agenda:

The evidence from around the country is that quality of place is an—if not the most—important component in retaining and attracting talent. Places with quality infrastructure, basic services and amenities are the places that retain and attract talent the best.

Through Advancing Macomb’s “Eastside Out” initiative, the group is marketing the county’s expansive network of bike paths, parks and access to waterways like the Clinton River and Lake St. Clair. The organization also coordinated an effort earlier this year to distribute 800 free bikes to Macomb County residents. On the “Eastside Out” website, the group is also encouraging Macomb County residents to post stories about their own experiences kayaking, boating, hiking and biking in Macomb County as well as touting man-made attractions like their picks for the county’s best restaurants.

Macomb County’s big neighbor to the west has set the tone for placemaking efforts in the region. Development of the Detroit riverfront and investments in attractions like Campus Martius Park and Eastern Market have paid off handsomely, attracting renters and even home buyers to downtown and midtown Detroit in numbers that haven’t been seen in generations. Companies like Quicken and Lear have worked collaboratively with nonprofit entities like the Downtown Detroit Partnership and city government to create downtown urban gardens and gathering spaces that are attractive to young professionals.

Wayne State University, where I serve on the board, has been a strong partner in efforts to boost placemaking. WSU was an early supporter of the Q line and has worked with groups like Midtown Detroit to create innovations like attractive signage to help boost the campus’ connectivity to its booming surrounding neighborhood. Recently, the university used crowdfunding to raise money to build a family-friendly park at the busy intersection of Woodward and Warren avenues, an asset that be a boon not only to Wayne State but to the entire city.

Michigan has lots of problems. We also have great natural assets. Business and political leaders would be wise to leverage our state’s often-stunning but underrated landscape to attract and keep talent.

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There is ample evidence that there is no greater engine of economic mobility than a four-year degree. Sadly, however, 217 of the 381 public institutions that were studied for the Equality of Opportunity Project’s Mobility Score Card, admitted 4.6 percent fewer students from the lower 40 percent of income rankings between 1999 and 2013. That should come as no surprise given the growing financial burden for tuition that states are placing on students and their families. In Michigan, state disinvestment has led to two-thirds of tuition costs being covered by students and less than a third of tuition costs being covered by state funding, the exact opposite of the funding formula that was the norm until the early 1990s, back when state leaders recognized and funded higher education as a public good.

Between 2008 and 2016, per student funding in higher education declined 18 percent nationally, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities . The decline is even more stark in Michigan, where per-student funding declined 21 percent.

It matters because people who have degrees have lower unemployment rates and higher salaries than those with a high school diploma or less. According to the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics, students who graduated in Great Recession-plagued 2008 were earning an average of $52,000 four years later. Six years after graduation, their unemployment rate was 3.4 percent, a fraction of the 10 percent unemployment rate for workers with a high school diploma or less in 2014.

While some have questioned the value proposition of paying for a college degree, it’s telling that wealthy Americans overwhelmingly send their kids to college. In fact, while the number of students admitted from the bottom 40 percent has lagged, nearly two-thirds of the schools that were studied in the Mobility Score Card admitted 5.4 percent more students from the top 20 percent in family income.

As a board member at Wayne State University, a school that prides itself on accessibility, I understand the difficult choices that university leaders are forced to make when building a student body. State disinvestment has forced schools to vigorously compete for students whose families can afford to pay full tuition costs and sometimes in that competition, the need to recruit and retain low income students can be lost.

But if we want a nation where the American Dream is something more than a hollow slogan, we need to make access to higher education real for the low-income students who need it most.

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Since we’ve released our report, we have spent a lot of time thinking about how to best get our ideas into the platforms of 2018 state candidates. Many people have advised us that the best – and possibly only – way to get momentum for our ideas is by getting buy-in from Michigan business leaders. Truthfully, it seems like our agenda would be an easy sell to the corporate community. While state political leaders have doubled down on tax cuts as the only meaningful strategy for attracting and retaining business, business leaders have long said talent is the most important driver as they make decisions about where to stay and locate.

Michigan Future believes our educational system – from birth through college – should be focused on giving students the very skills that employers say workers need in the modern workplace. These are skills that authors Roberta Michnick Golinkoff and Kathy Hirsh-Pasek have described as “the six Cs”: the ability to collaborate, communicate, think critically, be creative, understand and use content and possess the confidence to execute these skills. While business leaders have repeatedly agreed that these are the skills they look for when they hire, they have been loath to engage in policy debates about K-12 or higher education in Michigan beyond their support for the common core and its reliance on standardized tests.

Meanwhile, the corporate community is radio silent on the other levers in our agenda – placemaking and shared prosperity – even though they know that the talented millennial workers they hope to attract to places like Detroit and Grand Rapids are seeking desirable amenities, services and infrastructure. They also know that automation will so fundamentally change the world of work that there will be many workers who will be unable to find jobs that offer a sustaining wage. Why shouldn’t the business community be engaged in frank discussions about how we address that looming challenge?

In a recent Detroit Free Press column, Nancy Kaffer noted that as online giant Amazon looks to build a second headquarters, southeast Michigan would likely not be a credible candidate because of policy decisions such as our longstanding rejection of adequate transit. While cities like Denver have seen tremendous growth that is directly attributable to the development of transit systems, some leaders in southeast Michigan and Lansing have actively and successfully campaigned against efforts to expand transit here.

It is said that business leaders like Dan Gilbert are now engaged in a full-court press to pitch southeast Michigan and Windsor to Amazon. While it’s heartening to see corporate support for this potentially game-changing project, it sure would be nice to see sustained support for strategies that would make Michigan an organic choice for employers like Amazon.

In a later column, Kaffer listed several other ways that elected leaders have both let down Michigan citizens and made the state less attractive to potential investors:

This is a state in which fewer than half of schoolchildren, those kids in so-called good suburban schools as well as struggling city schools, score proficient in math and reading. This is a state that has bet heavily on sprawl, a bet that is not working out so well. This is a state where our roads are still crumbling, and funds to fix them come from a half-baked legislative deal that will rob other state services. This is a state where cities have been left to languish too long, because too many lawmakers believe that suburbs and exurbs can thrive without strong central cities.
Yeah, our failure to invest in this state — in our infrastructure, our children, our social safety net, our air and water — is a turnoff for business.

Kaffer rightly points out that even when lawmakers attempt to pivot away from destructive policies, it’s only because they get marching orders from business leaders to do so.

So as Michigan Future Inc. pitches our agenda, we will continue to reach out to leaders in the business community with hopes that they will carry our ideas forward to potential candidates. But, as Kaffer says so eloquently, it sure would be nice if legislators would make decisions based on the interests of citizens and not just corporations.

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The dirty little secret on college campuses is that many academics are either indifferent to or secretly proud of the fact that large numbers of students wash out. Many professors, deans and even college presidents were trained in academic environments where the typical view was that student failure is a sign of the university’s academic rigor rather than an institutional failure. As a result, even schools that market themselves as universities of opportunity often grapple with lackluster six-year undergraduate graduation rates because marginal students drop out instead of receiving effective interventions.

In Michigan Future Inc.’s first-ever policy report,we urge state leaders to boost funding for higher education in the state and restructure K-12 education to make it relevant to 21st century college and career preparedness. It’s important because we make a compelling case that college degree attainment is increasingly the dominant factor in long-term career success.

And although a college education is the great equalizer in the American economy, too often the definition of what constitutes whether a student is “college material” is fraught with class considerations. According to Paul Tough , who has written extensively and brilliantly about student success, only one-quarter of college freshmen from the lower half of the economic scale will go on to finish a degree. That statistic for children of parents in the top economic quartile? Approximately 90 percent.

The good news is that there is beginning to be a widespread recognition that student success is the most important marker of institutional success in higher education. What good is it to generate amazing research and attract stellar scholars to a campus if students aren’t earning degrees? As a result, many schools are engaging in innovations designed to boost students’ sense of belongingness on college campuses instead of sending messages that some students simply aren’t college material. For example, Tough has written about programs for at-risk disadvantaged students at the University of Texas-Austin designed to leverage data to tailor instruction and boost students’ academic self-esteem.

During a speech at Governor Rick Snyder’s recent State Universities Summit, George L. Mehaffy, vice president for academic leadership and change for the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, lifted up programs like the ones at UT-Austin and encouraged university board members to push for similar innovations on their own campuses. Mehaffy cautioned against small-scale, boutique solutions and pilots, urging university leaders to engage in bold and broad student success initiatives.

At Wayne State University, where I serve as a board member, we have been engaged in a multi-year overhaul of our general education requirements for undergraduate students. We discovered that our math requirement both didn’t serve the numeracy needs of our students and was the number one academic barrier to undergraduate graduation. In his recent speech, Mehaffy said most college algebra is designed to prepare students for calculus but only 10% of college students go on to take calculus. So why, then, does mandating college algebra make sense for all undergraduate students? University leaders need to ask themselves these questions. It’s not about lowering standards. It’s about ensuring that students earn degrees that give them broad knowledge that is presented in a way that is tailored to their academic and career interests.

A few weeks ago, I attended Wayne State University’s student convocation for incoming freshmen and transfer students, and the messages sent by our president, provost, student and academic senate representatives, dean of student affairs and keynote speaker and journalism professor Jack Lessenberry were a dramatic pivot from the dire, threat-filled messages I received as a freshman at Wayne 30 years ago. Instead of telling the students that some of them didn’t belong, speakers at this year’s convocation explained that they wouldn’t have been admitted to Wayne State unless they did. Instead of making students fear failure, the speakers pushed them to embrace the fact that academic challenges are a reality of college life and that they should avail themselves of the network of university resources in place to help them navigate them.

Truthfully, it takes more than pep rallies to boost student success at universities like Wayne State. It takes focused, disciplined leadership from the university administration and board to convey a message that every member of the university community — from faculty to support staff to students themselves — is responsible for student success. We know that there are economic and social benefits to be realized when more Michigan students earn degrees, but there is something bigger at play.

“Here’s a simple argument for student success: It’s the right thing to do,” Mehaffy told Michigan university leaders. “You take students in then, by God, you ought to work hard to make them successful. You have a moral obligation, I would argue.”

As a university board member, it’s my strong belief that once a university sends an incoming student an acceptance letter, they are signing a pact to work with them to help them earn a college degree. This pact must hold for all the students we accept, not only those who were lucky enough to have access to K-12 education that prepared them for academic success at college.

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As shocked as I was by the prediction, I was equally shocked that everyone in the audience- which was largely composed of elected and appointed board members for Michigan’s 15 public universities – didn’t gasp. Surely the end of a public higher education is a gasp-worthy concern. But something has happened over the past few decades when it comes to funding college. Too often, even ardent supporters of higher education have accepted the idea that de-funding of public universities is inevitable instead of bad policy that can and should be challenged.

It matters because according to a study by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, 65 percent of jobs by 2020 will require some post-secondary education or training and 35 percent of those jobs will require a bachelor’s degree. In Michigan Future’s first-ever state policy agenda, we argue with ample evidence that the education-attainment-based income gap is widening, there is no more effective public policy strategy to boost Michigan’s economy than increasing the number of Michiganders who hold four-year degrees.

Ironically, Michigan built one of the nation’s finest higher education systems at a time when our robust manufacturing economy put a comfortable living within the reach of people with limited educational credentials. It’s pretty infuriating that now that economic stability is increasingly dependent on college degree attainment, Lansing lawmakers have largely rejected the idea that expanding access to higher education is a public good.

State funding for higher education in Michigan is woefully inadequate. Public universities largely operate with two main sources of revenue: State funding and tuition. As the state of Michigan has allocated less funding to state universities, tuition rates have increased. Since 2001, state funding for Michigan’s public universities has dropped almost 40% when adjusted for inflation. As my colleague Patrick Cooney has noted, Michigan’s public universities received roughly 60% of their operating budgets from state appropriations in 1985, relying on student tuition for 30%, with the rest coming from other sources. Today, only 20% of university operating budgets come from state support, while 70% comes from student tuition.

This has made college increasingly unaffordable, especially for middle class students whose families make too much to receive Pell grants but are not wealthy enough to pay tuition without loans. Lansing lawmakers have encouraged university boards and leaders to tighten their belts, but after two decades of cost cutting, there is little, if any, fat left to cut.

A budget is a statement of a state’s priorities. This is a moment when Michiganders need to decide whether they think their money is better spent investing in a better-educated workforce or offering another round of tax cuts that have had mediocre returns on job creation. What good is it to use tax cuts to lure companies to and retain companies in Michigan if we don’t have workers who are prepared to fill the jobs they will offer?

So I hope the university board members who attended Governor Snyder’s Higher Education Summit will do more than gasp about the dire potential consequences of our state’s disinvestment in higher education. Many of these leaders are politically connected and I hope they will use their voices in an organized fashion to encourage legislators to boost funding for state universities. Support for higher education is not a partisan matter. It’s about the economic survival of our state.

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The idea is to attract educators back to the city and its schools and help solve Detroit’s teacher shortage. As recently as April, Detroit Public Schools Community District officials said the district was more than 260 teachers short, forcing DPSCD to rely upon short-term solutions like using administrators and long-term substitutes to cover classrooms. The shortage has also led to severely overcrowded classrooms that have seriously stymied the district’s efforts to boost student success.

While many are hopeful that the housing incentive could ease the district’s issues with classroom overcrowding, having more teachers in the city has an important ancillary benefit: The reintroduction of middle class families into a city that has staggering rates of concentrated poverty. White and black middle class flight has left Detroit grappling with paralyzing rates of concentrated poverty, defined as neighborhoods where more than 40 percent of residents fall below the federal poverty threshold ($24,000 for a family of four). According to a study recently released by the Brookings Institution, metro Detroit has the highest rate of concentrated poverty among the top 25 metro areas in the U.S. by population.

In a 2015 City Lab article, urban theorist Richard Florida argued that concentrated poverty is America’s biggest problem because children who grow up in neighborhoods with concentrated poverty often find themselves stuck there. He presents evidence that policy decisions such as exclusionary suburban housing policies have exacerbated the problem. And a 2016 report by Harvard researchers Raj Chetty, Nathaniel Hendren and Lawrence Katz found that children who live in neighborhoods with concentrated poverty at a young age then move to a lower-poverty neighborhood had significantly higher college attendance rates and earnings than their peers who remained in neighborhoods with concentrated poverty.

Currently, more than half of DPSCD’s teachers live outside of Detroit. The drive to move more teachers into Detroit won’t totally address Detroit’s lack of economic diversity, but their increased presence in the city would be a welcome development. One unfortunate consequence for children who live in neighborhoods with concentrated poverty is that they are often denied the opportunity to form personal relationships with college-educated adults. It matters because as Michigan Future Inc. posits in our first-ever policy agenda, increasing college attainment is by far the most effective strategy to boost household income in Michigan. At the press conference to announce the new incentive, DPSCD Superintendant Nick Vitti acknowledged the program’s potential to build stronger bonds between students and educators.

“…It allows us to go back to an age when our teachers were directly linked to our schools and the community, which builds a better relationship with our students,” Vitti said.

So while I’m hopeful that the city’s housing incentive for teachers will lower class sizes, I also hope that the infusion of middle class families in Detroit neighborhoods will help dilute Detroit’s concentrated poverty and increase low income residents’ exposure to middle class families, potentially boosting access to opportunity for Detroit students and the schools where they are educated.

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