DETROIT – Thanks to term limits, Michigan will elect an entirely new set of statewide officeholders this year. Besides a new governor, lieutenant governor, secretary of state and attorney general, most of the state senate and a large portion of the state house will also be new.
Most voters aren’t happy with their current leaders – and even more are worried about the long-term decline of the state. But who should voters choose to lead them? That’s a common question I get asked when I speak to citizens’ groups around the state. My answer is always the same:
“Choose only those candidates who believe that the future is more important than the present – and that your children and grandchildren’s lives are more important than our own.”
For the brutal fact is that Michigan is not the state it was half a century ago, when the population was still growing faster than the national average and it was relatively rich. Michigan’s per capita income in the 1950s was sometimes as much as 120 percent of the national average. It stayed consistently above the national level till the 1980s. Thanks largely to the auto industry; Michigan was one of the nation’s wealthiest states as well. But incomes in the state have been below the national average since 1999. National per capita income last year was $50,342. Michigan’s was only $45,255, lower than 29 other states. That was an improvement over the depths of the auto recession in 2009, when Michigan was abysmal 40th. But many key indicators point to things getting worse, if present policies and trends continue.
Consider education. Half a century ago, a student could graduate from high school and get a boring, but well-paying unskilled job on an assembly line. That’s no longer the case. General Motors had more blue-collar workers on the job in Flint back in 1979 than it does today in the entire nation. Education is more important than ever.
Essentially, it is impossible for a young person today to hope to lead a middle-class lifestyle without some form of higher education. But perversely, we’ve made getting one ever harder. Here’s one example: In the fall of 1969, when I enrolled as a freshman at Michigan State University, tuition was $15 per credit hour. Adjusted for inflation, that is $101.72 today. Back then, a student could get a good factory or warehouse job in the summer, and earn enough to pay most of the costs of her or his education the next year.
Not any longer.
Last fall, tuition at MSU was $482 per credit hour. Why have costs escalated so dramatically? In part, because years ago, the state did a far better job funding higher education. Partly out of concern over the need to be competitive in the world of Cold War competition with the Soviet Union, the state of Michigan funded roughly 70 percent of tuition costs. Now, the situation is reversed; students are responsible for nearly three-quarters of the cost. Those not from wealthy families or on full-ride scholarships often borrow $60,000 or more to finish a bachelor’s degree.
Sometimes, they fail to finish, but still owe vast sums; debts that can’t be refinanced or gotten rid of, even through bankruptcy. The problem doesn’t start there, however: Michigan isn’t doing the job in elementary and high school education, either. According to a recent USA Today survey of every state, “few state school systems report worse achievement metrics than Michigan.” Statistics show “both fourth and eighth grade students are less likely to be proficient in math and reading than the typical American public school student.”
All this has helped to fuel a brain and population drain that has meant Michigan has lost political clout. The state now has five fewer members of Congress than it did in 1980. That’s the bad news. The good news is that Michigan does still have many resources, a strong manufacturing base, and huge tourist potential. So how can Michigan get competitive again?
For one thing, raising taxes to fund improvements in the public sector would almost certainly help; contrary to popular myth, Michigan is no longer a high-tax state. Michigan residents pay a smaller percentage of their total income in taxes than those in either Ohio or Indiana, for example.
But when it comes to education, nobody thinks merely throwing money at the problem is the solution. Charles Ballard, professor of economics at Michigan State University, specializes in the state’s economy. “At the top of my list for making Michigan a better place is a population with higher levels of education and skill,” he said. Ballard would begin by providing universal pre-kindergarten for all children, something the state has been gradually easing towards with its “Great Start Readiness Program.”
But beyond that, he would revamp teaching in ways that studies have shown would make more sense. “Among students who get a high-school diploma in Michigan, my guess is that the average one has about a 10th-grade education, My goal is for every child to finish high school, at least, and for every diploma to mean an actual 12th grade education,” he said.
He would extend the school year to 195 days, putting more emphasis on writing, and start the high school day later to accommodate the sleep needs of teenagers.
This would certainly cost money, but in the long run, nothing could cost Michigan as much as continued decline. Besides, every previous generation of Americans has wanted their children to have better lives.
Do we really want to be the first generation to want our descendants’ lives to be worse?
