With more than 100,000 unfilled jobs statewide, rural manufacturers often lose out in the scramble for skilled trade workers. Can added lures like company daycare, health clinics or cash bonuses turn the tide?
Talent & Education
To prosper, Michigan must be a more educated place. Bridge will explore the challenges in education and identify policies and initiatives that address them.
Posted inTalent & Education
In Jackson, school choice bring new reality: students as fickle customers
Jackson loses 40 percent of school-age children to other districts and charters. How districts respond illustrates the free-market educational system for Michigan families, and the budgetary challenges districts face.
Posted inTalent & Education
Where they stand: Michigan candidates for governor on K-12 education
Perhaps no issue is as important to Michigan’s future as improving the state’s schools and increasing the number of post-secondary graduates. Here’s how the candidates answered questions from Bridge.
Posted inTalent & Education
Where they stand: Michigan governor candidates on college affordability
Some Michigan governor candidates want to make college free, others want to emphasize career tech. Here’s what the candidates facing primary challenges are saying about the rising cost of college.
Posted inTalent & Education
Why rural Michigan teens are skipping out on college. It's not grades
If Michigan is going to deepen its talent pool, it needs to figure out how to get more rural high school grads onto campuses, and how to keep them there.
Posted inTalent & Education
To get first-generation students to college: Could the answer be…a bus?
While other universities struggle to get rural and first-generation students to apply, Central Michigan University came up with a surprisingly simple solution: foot the bill to bring busloads for campus visits.
Posted inTalent & Education
Public outcry delays Michigan social studies standards
Proposed changes in what’s taught as history in classrooms from kindergarten through high school are causing an uproar. The state is extending public hearings through September.
Posted inTalent & Education
Ignore the sticker price at Michigan universities. Here’s the real cost.
Bridge shows the surprising differences between the published price and the real cost of attending Michigan’s 15 public universities. Students from middle-class and low-income families take note.
Posted inTalent & Education
Graphic: The cost for your family at 15 Michigan universities
If you know your household income, you can look up the actual cost of attending each of Michigan’s 15 public universities, as of the 2016-17 school year.
Posted inTalent & Education
Groups join hands to fix Michigan schools. Will it make a difference?
Leaders from education, business, unions and philanthropy announced Wednesday that they will huddle to improve the state’s lagging public schools.