In their own way, Michigan Republicans like Sen. Joe Hune and Rep. Bill Rogers seem to agree with GOP presidential contender Rick Santorum that people who go to college are "snobs."
In an article in the Livingston Press and Argus on Sunday (March 11, 2012), both Hune and Rogers came out against a Democratic plan to eliminate $1.8 billion in business tax credits and direct the money to lowering tuition costs at state universities.
Hune found it unacceptable. Why, the very idea that businesses should pay to help educate their future employees -- the engineers, accountants, computer programers, and others who will do the work that produces their profits -- was beyond Hune's comprehension. Somebody else should pay for that, apparently, so businesses can reap the benefit at no cost to themselves.
Rogers came across as clueless as to what has happened to higher education funding in Michigan in the last decade. Decrying tuition increases, Rogers demanded to know "where is that money going."
Sad to say Bill, but it has gone to replace the funds that state government used to provide -- like the more than $800 per student cut in higher education funding you approved last year.
Ir Rogers wants to know why college tuition is up to $400 per credit hour at Michigan State University, he should look in the mirror.
Showing posts with label Higher Education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Higher Education. Show all posts
Sunday, March 11, 2012
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Why Not Keep People from Leaving in the First Place?
Rick Snyder has things bass-ackwards.
As Michigan young people leave the state and the state gets older on average, Rick Snyder thinks the state should encourage legal immigrants to come to the state.
And they should bring their advanced degrees with them.
Why? Because Michigan itself doesn't want to spend any money to help its current residents get college degrees, advanced or otherwise. It wants to cut -- no, slash -- spending on education at all levels in order to give a $1.8 billion tax cut to business.
By asking well-educated immigrants to come to Michigan, Snyder is conceding that education is good for business and job creation, but he is turning around and cutting it off at the knees here in Michigan with cuts in K-12 and higher education.
Like lots of business interests, Snyder wants the benefits of a highly educated citizenry, he just expects somebody else to pay the freight for producing a highly educated citizenry.
Snyder is sending a pretty clear message to young people that they should leave the state when he not only makes it prohibitively expensive for them to get an education in Michigan, but he does his best to eliminate one path to employment for them -- the film industry.
One $80 million film studio recently opened in Michigan only because tax credits for the project were approved by Gov. Jennifer Granholm before Snyder announced his plan to put a stop to them.
By cutting education and stifling a new industry Snyder is creating a vacuum to be backfilled by people educated elsewhere.
Wouldn't it just make more sense to educate our own people and keep them here?
As Michigan young people leave the state and the state gets older on average, Rick Snyder thinks the state should encourage legal immigrants to come to the state.
And they should bring their advanced degrees with them.
Why? Because Michigan itself doesn't want to spend any money to help its current residents get college degrees, advanced or otherwise. It wants to cut -- no, slash -- spending on education at all levels in order to give a $1.8 billion tax cut to business.
By asking well-educated immigrants to come to Michigan, Snyder is conceding that education is good for business and job creation, but he is turning around and cutting it off at the knees here in Michigan with cuts in K-12 and higher education.
Like lots of business interests, Snyder wants the benefits of a highly educated citizenry, he just expects somebody else to pay the freight for producing a highly educated citizenry.
Snyder is sending a pretty clear message to young people that they should leave the state when he not only makes it prohibitively expensive for them to get an education in Michigan, but he does his best to eliminate one path to employment for them -- the film industry.
One $80 million film studio recently opened in Michigan only because tax credits for the project were approved by Gov. Jennifer Granholm before Snyder announced his plan to put a stop to them.
By cutting education and stifling a new industry Snyder is creating a vacuum to be backfilled by people educated elsewhere.
Wouldn't it just make more sense to educate our own people and keep them here?
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Worst All-Time Commencement Speaker?
It took a long time, but the University of Michigan finally found a worse graduation speaker than the one who addressed the College of LSA graduates the year my daughter got her undergraduate degree.
The year was 1994 and the temperature was about 35 degrees and raining when I had to sit in the Big House and listen to the author of the cartoon strip "Cathy" talk to the graduates, including many intelligent young women, about the virtues of going into the women's restroom and eating a box of donuts when something goes wrong.
No wonder my daughter ended up as a researcher into solutions for obesity, given the send-off that ding-dong gave her.
In the year's since, I've read of far more famous commencement speakers than the nitwit my daughter had to listen to. Why didn't they have him or her when Jennifer graduated, I'd fume.
But this year, U of M finally outdid the Cathy spectre when they invited Rick Snyder, the Republican governor who wants to cut the heart out of higher education so that the younger siblings of this year's graduates will end up paying more tuition from what will be a lower quality education.
Yes, there is a worse commencement speaker than that cartoon writer, and his policies are no laughing matter.
The year was 1994 and the temperature was about 35 degrees and raining when I had to sit in the Big House and listen to the author of the cartoon strip "Cathy" talk to the graduates, including many intelligent young women, about the virtues of going into the women's restroom and eating a box of donuts when something goes wrong.
No wonder my daughter ended up as a researcher into solutions for obesity, given the send-off that ding-dong gave her.
In the year's since, I've read of far more famous commencement speakers than the nitwit my daughter had to listen to. Why didn't they have him or her when Jennifer graduated, I'd fume.
But this year, U of M finally outdid the Cathy spectre when they invited Rick Snyder, the Republican governor who wants to cut the heart out of higher education so that the younger siblings of this year's graduates will end up paying more tuition from what will be a lower quality education.
Yes, there is a worse commencement speaker than that cartoon writer, and his policies are no laughing matter.
Monday, January 24, 2011
PhDs and the Future
I just finished reading an interesting book on the founding of Google, called The Gooogle Story. Although it´s mostly a celebratory account (and maybe there are mostly good things to say about the search engine giant) I came away with one strong impression.
The age of the MBAs is over. The age of the PhDs is here.
Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page were both doctoral students at Stanford when they began working on their search engine. They ultimately took leaves of absences as their project became all consuming. But they are academically grounded through and through. And they hired many people with doctorates in their fields. They wanted the best in their fields in terms of knowledge, a questioning attitude, the ability to focus, a sense of vision, and on and on.
People who exploited other people´s ideas, even in a good way, just weren´t enough. When Google went public, Brin and Page stiffed the big Wall Street firms and did it their way, slashing fees paid to firms to handle the IPO, making the stock available to small investors, and so on.
Google continues to search for the best talent it can find, even if that means going into Microsoft´s back yard. The two giants even went to court over whether Google could hire someone away from Microsoft. Imagine, big corporations fighting over people with PhDs, once derided as people who deal only with abstractions and can´t do anything in the socalled real world, except create a whole new economy built around the Internet.
To add even further insult, Google makes a point of saying it runs its company like a university rather than a business. That includes giving employees 20 percent time, one day a week to work on whatever they find interesting.
What all this adds up to is the importance of higher education, and the importance of contininuing to invest in it even in tough economic times.
The age of the MBAs is over. The age of the PhDs is here.
Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page were both doctoral students at Stanford when they began working on their search engine. They ultimately took leaves of absences as their project became all consuming. But they are academically grounded through and through. And they hired many people with doctorates in their fields. They wanted the best in their fields in terms of knowledge, a questioning attitude, the ability to focus, a sense of vision, and on and on.
People who exploited other people´s ideas, even in a good way, just weren´t enough. When Google went public, Brin and Page stiffed the big Wall Street firms and did it their way, slashing fees paid to firms to handle the IPO, making the stock available to small investors, and so on.
Google continues to search for the best talent it can find, even if that means going into Microsoft´s back yard. The two giants even went to court over whether Google could hire someone away from Microsoft. Imagine, big corporations fighting over people with PhDs, once derided as people who deal only with abstractions and can´t do anything in the socalled real world, except create a whole new economy built around the Internet.
To add even further insult, Google makes a point of saying it runs its company like a university rather than a business. That includes giving employees 20 percent time, one day a week to work on whatever they find interesting.
What all this adds up to is the importance of higher education, and the importance of contininuing to invest in it even in tough economic times.
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