Michigan Future Schools, an initiative of Michigan Future, Inc. that Lou, Pat, Kim and I (your regular bloggers here at MFI) all worked on, wound up its direct work with schools in large part by last summer. This year our…
Our recent report, “A Path to Good-paying Careers for all Michiganders: A 21st Century state policy agenda,” lays out the importance of placemaking to a prosperous Michigan, especially in our biggest cities. Some states have powerful economic development tools especially…
In Lou’s work with Michigan Future, he has argued for years—and argues again in our recent report—that Michigan needs to come to grips with the fact that a prosperous state economy isn’t driven anymore by lots of low-skilled manufacturing work,…
Oregon's legislature is considering a fascinating, and controversial, bill to remove certain local controls over development in favor of new, faster development and higher density. The Atlantic's "City Lab" reports: H.B. 2007 would preempt residential downzoning in cities, meaning a…
This week, Marketplace started a great series on the ways that robots and automation are rapidly changing the jobs that are available to humans. This reporting follows on the heels of a McKinsey report that surprised many people with its…
Michigan Future Schools (MFS), a seven-year long initiative of Michigan Future, Inc., to fund and grow high schools in Detroit that are committed to high school graduation (read more here) wound down its work last summer. We’ve spent time this…
Read this and let it sink in for a minute: A man with only a high school diploma is twice as likely to be out of work as a man who has a four-year college degree. And, of the 9.3…
At MFI, we were already supportive of prison reform that helps nonviolent criminals stay out of jail when appropriate, not least because doing time severely limits one’s ability to participate meaningfully in the economy following release. When we look at…
The Education Trust just published a report that shows the sizable gap between African-American and white completion rates at America’s colleges. Overall, 63.2 percent of white students who enroll in a four-year college graduate in six years, while only 40.6…
A recent post making the urbanist rounds asks, “Is Detroit Really Making a Comeback?” The authors’ research, which was just published in the journal Cities, looks at employment, income, housing values, and other data to explore whether the resurgence evidenced…