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Here is the whole story: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB30001424052748703558004574581650636077732.html
"Vacant buildings drain the city of potential taxes and workers who pay to park, buy lunches and shop over their lunch hours. The overall image raises further doubts in the minds of outsiders who might otherwise be interested in setting up shop in Detroit. "For downtown Detroit, it really slows down a lot of the progress that was being made," Ball said."
"While there is no official ledger of empty buildings, The Detroit News identified 48 major structures with no outward signs of life in the Central Business District, which covers about 127 blocks. Others have one or two remaining tenants. "
"Vacancies downtown are only a small part of the story: According to the U.S. Postal Service, there are 62,000 uninhabited buildings and vacant lots throughout Detroit. Entire blocks of commercial and residential property are deserted. "
In just a few weeks, nearly ten thousand students will rise en masse inside Michigan Stadium and join the ranks of the alumni of one of the nation's premier universities. They'll walk away from the University of Michigan with a top notch education, but also the distinction of possibly being one of the last graduating classes of a genuinely public institution.
The cash-strapped state of Michigan is looking to save money any way it can, and some political leaders have suggested essentially privatizing the state's flagship university. While formally turning the school into a private university would be tricky — requiring legislative approval, a constitutional amendment, and the support of the university's Board of Regents — legislators have proposed eliminating the $327 million in funding that the state provides to the university each year. Making up the state's contribution, however, would require an endowment on the order of $16 billion, a nearly impossible task even in flush times. (Just a few years ago, the school's endowment was around $7.5 billion, but it has taken a significant hit with the fall of the stock market.) Which means that in order to survive, the university may have to make dramatic changes that could threaten its character. (See pictures of the college dorm's evolution.)
Michigan's long-serving 19th-century president James Angell used to say that the school provided "an uncommon education for the common man." But many are starting to wonder if that mission is still possible. And Michigan is not the only public university in crisis. As states across the country face budget shortfalls, leading schools like the universities of Wisconsin, North Carolina and Virginia increasingly depend on support from outside their home states, either in the form of philanthropy or in top tuition rates paid by a growing number of wealthy out-of-state students. The result has already been a quasi-privatization of some of the nation's top research institutions and the economic stratification of their student bodies.
James Duderstadt, UM president from 1988 to 1996, has argued for years that it is a misnomer to call schools like the University of Michigan "state universities." The state's annual contribution to the school's operating budget is now less than 6%, about half the share that California puts into its state schools and roughly the same level as Virginia. "The state is our smallest minority shareholder," says Duderstadt. (See TIME's special report on paying for college.)
The state's financial role has in fact been shrinking throughout the past decade as its economy foundered. Last year, the university provost's office complained in a report to the Board of Regents that the state's "assumed allocation will put our state appropriation at a level that is almost $34 million lower than the amount that was appropriated for FY2002, in nominal dollars, and nearly $100 million lower in inflation-adjusted dollars." At the same time, the university has helped prop up the struggling local economy by approving more than $500 million in construction and renovation projects.
Traditionally, state universities provided an affordable education for its residents by offering subsidized in-state tuition. For Lansing native Anneke Stadt, a sophomore nursing student, the $11,037 tuition is the main reason she's at the University of Michigan. Stadt says she looked into private schools like Hope College ($33,000 tuition) and Kalamazoo College ($38,000 tuition). "I couldn't really afford them, though," she explains, "so I hedged my bets with the public school."
As schools like Michigan struggle to make up falling state contributions, however, fewer students like Stadt are getting slots in entering classes. Out-of-state students pay $33,000 in tuition at Michigan — nearly three times the amount that residents bring in — and those extra dollars are needed more than ever. Non-residents now make up 37% of undergraduates at the university; add graduate students and nearly half the university's students comes from out-of-state. A leading public university like University of California at Berkeley, by contrast, only pulls 8% of its undergraduates from outside California.
The temptation for Michigan to substantially increase its revenue by accepting more non-residents who are eager to attend has to be hard to resist. While speculating what would happen if the university moved to a private, market-based system, current president Mary Sue Coleman wrote in 2005 that "historically two-thirds of our applications have been from national or international students, and yet about two-thirds of our enrolled students have been from Michigan."
"It was the state support that allowed us to have that public character," Duderstadt argues. As that support drops, student bodies are becoming not only more national but also more stratified. "We still promise that no Michigan student will ever be denied the opportunity to attend for financial reasons," Duderstadt says. "But that means we can't provide help for students from out-of-state. So the economic distribution for them is significantly different from those in-state." One fairly reliable measure of the economic diversity of a campus is the percentage of students who receive Pell Grants. Roughly 30% of the undergraduates at UCLA or UC-Berkeley are Pell Grant recipients. At Michigan, by contrast, that number is only around 12%.
So far, public universities like Michigan have been confident about their ability to attract enough wealthy out-of-state students to help fill their coffers. But it will become difficult to continue competing with private institutions if they cannot simultaneously expand their research capacity and recruit top-flight faculty. And the struggling economy is forcing even wealthy families to look for the best value for their tuition dollars. For just $5,000 more in tuition, an out-of-state student could forgo Michigan for New York University, the nation's largest private school with nearly double the number of faculty. In recent years, international enrollments at American public universities has also dropped as more students turn to premier schools in Europe and Asia.
"In other parts of the world," says Duderstadt, "countries view it as a national interest to build institutions of world-class quality. The U.S. is unique in not having a national strategy for maintaining world-class universities." True, the American system of state universities has until recently done pretty well for itself, building solid schools, fostering strong regional pride and creating some fierce athletic rivalries. But as Michigan and other top public universities are learning, fight songs and sports fans aren't enough to finance a first class education.
This was the building where Detroit's deeply-troubled public school system once stored its supplies, and then one day walked away from it all, allowing everything to go to waste.
http://www.freep.com/article/20090419/COL10/904190463
I will just say it: a movement like ours will not go very far without the empowerment of black people who also want what is best for the city. Whether we work with them or work for them, when 81% of any population is of one race, that race needs to be especially respected and represented. The link above is about Bryan Barnhill. Growing up in a tough part of East Detroit, he overcame living on the same block as a crack house and hearing gunshots while trying to sleep. His perseverance landed him at Harvard where he made a difference. Now he's come back home to make an even bigger difference, but alas, no one will hire him.
We need to create opportunities for talented young men and women like Mr. Barnhill. We need to work with these talents and keep them in the city. How can we do it? How do we make sure our talent sticks around to create the social and cultural revolution we need? One thing is for sure, if we keep letting go of the talent we have, it may never return.
Mr. Barnhill is not from the suburbs and I am not from the city. But I know that we need each other. We need to work together. We need to begin the dialogue. We need to utilize each other's talents. And above all, we need to support one another. What do you think?
Award-winning Dutch journalist Jacqueline Maris is back in the Netherlands, safe and sound after her reporting trip to Detroit last week during which she and a photographer were carjacked.
“I could have done a very positive story,” she said, “but there are drugs, gangs, wild dogs and garbage.”
In Detroit, she was struck by how much the entire city outside of the central business district appears to be in distress.
“It looks nice in downtown,” Maris said. “The Book Cadillac is very nice, and you see the potential. But when you get in the neighborhoods, it is very shocking. Wherever you go you see the houses that were once the houses of dreams. You see once there was a thriving life there.”
“People in Detroit seem very strong and resilient,” Maris said.
She’s not going to tell her listeners not to go to Detroit for fear of getting shot.
"The number of foreclosure filings in Wayne County, dominated by activity in the city of Detroit, dipped in February, the most recent figures available. But Oakland and Macomb counties' share of homes in foreclosure increased by double-digit percentages over the same month a year before, according to RealtyTrac, a California-based company that tracks housing numbers."
"The role reversal is attributable to many factors, including layoffs of suburban breadwinners -- blue- and white-collar alike -- and a recent surge in mortgage payment resets on types of loans more common outside Detroit's city limits."
"The spike in foreclosures has had one surprising effect: Home sales are on the rise. The market here fell so hard and fast that it quickly gained worldwide attention for "$1 houses," which investors have been snapping up by the dozens."
According to the researchers, the plan for economic vitality is clear. Michigan must:http://www.ur.umich.edu/0809/Apr13_09/29.php
• Place a higher value on learning and entrepreneurship;
• Create places where young, talented individuals want to live (e.g., vibrant central city neighborhoods;
• Ensure the long-term success of its higher-education system by expanding public investment;
• Transform teaching and learning to align with the realities of a "flattening" world; and
• Develop new private and public-sector leadership that is clearly focused on preparing, retaining and attracting talent — not re-creating the old economy.
"In January, the GM Foundation, the charitable arm of the struggling car maker, told groups like the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Michigan Opera Theater and Mosaic, a youth theater group, not to expect any funding this year. Late last month, Chrysler Foundation followed suit, announcing that it, too, would suspend its arts philanthropy. The Ford Motor Co. has said it expects its giving to fall by about 40 percent from last year."In the comments, I'll share a related article I wrote for the IAGD newsletter.
"Reflecting a similar trend, a statistic has been making the e-mail rounds lately that has galvanized consumers to buy local. According to the Michigan Department of Agriculture, the projection is: "If every household started spending just $10 per week of their current grocery budget on locally grown foods, we'd keep more than $37 million each week circulating within Michigan's economy." "
"In 2003, Ryan Anderson of Lincoln Park says he saw the writing on the wall. The following year, he started the Web site buymichiganproducts.com. "I just figured if people would start pumping their money into the local economy, we just might improve," says Anderson, a Web site development and software consultant."
There was some discussion about how Detroit could better attract the "creative class" - they are already here and word is getting out. The big point was to "spread the Gospel" of Detroit so to speak. There was a brief Q&A session. The point was made however, that the event was "preaching to the choir" - it should have happened in Ann Arbor. The moderator ended with an interesting poem about putting commas where we now put periods (when talking about Detroit) - we need to look forward and not try to remake the glorious Detroit of the 1950s.
The reception was ok - lots of attendees. Alas, I am not so great at the schmoozing, so I didn't meet to many people (ironic, as I am giving a speech on networking next week). Did speak to a couple of people though, including one of the panelists (who wrote the op-ed in the NYT about the $100 house). Interesting guy.
Overall, it was interesting event. I wouldn't say I learned too much or met the right people, but it was good to attend anyways, if only just to see a new part of the city. I guess these types of events happen rather often - the key is turning thoughts and ideas into action.
A website was also brought up, http://michiganfuture.org, which seems pretty interesting.
"With half of Michigan's college graduates now taking their diplomas across the state line, Gov. Jennifer Granholm will address Michigan's brain drain at a public forum on April 16. "http://detnews.com/article/20090404/POLITICS02/904040372/-1/ARCHIVE
"The free forum will be held at 9:30 a.m. April 16 at Fairlane Center North Quad E, 1900 Hubbard Drive, at University of Michigan-Dearborn. "
