Michigan is a failing state, at risk of becoming “another Appalachia” if legislators and industry leaders do not begin to invest more in higher education and technology, former University President James Duderstadt said.

In an effort to identify the problems stunting Michigan’s economic growth and to find solutions to these problems, Duderstadt has spent the last several years developing a report called the Michigan Roadmap, which has not yet been completed.

Duderstadt said many of Michigan’s major problems stem from the lack of investments made in higher education.

“Michigan ranks at the bottom of the Great Lakes (region) in its per-student support of higher education in its public universities — and it’s cutting them still further,” Duderstadt said in an interview with The Michigan Daily. “In fact, the appropriation of the University of Michigan today is less than it was when I stepped out as president in 1996, and it’s 8 percent of our operating budget, which is crazy.”

University regent Olivia Maynard (D-Goodrich) said she also believes the state needs to invest more in higher education.

“I wouldn’t put a dollar amount on it, I just think there needs to be a commitment to the future,” she said. “It would be really helpful if the Legislature could sit down and really try and understand the value of higher education.”

Duderstadt explained that the roadmap tries to identify what educational resources Michigan residents need and what type of workforce the state needs to be competitive in the 21st century.

“You first ask the question, ‘What do you need?’ Then you ask, ‘What do you have?’ What you have will probably not meet your needs, and so there’s a gap there and the roadmap tells you how to close the gap,” Duderstadt said.

Duderstadt identified new knowledge, education, infrastructure and new policies as the four main ingredients Michigan needs to compete in the new global economy. He said these needs are reflected in Michigan’s struggling economy.

For example, according to an advanced draft of the report given to The Michigan Daily, Michigan has the highest unemployment rate in the nation, due in part to the 254,000 jobs Michigan has lost from 2000 to 2003 — a 22 percent decline. Additionally, in 2004, Michigan was the only state that lost more jobs than it created, according to the Joint Economic Committee of Congress.

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, as of February 2005, Michigan had the highest unemployment in the nation at 7.5 percent.

Duderstadt cited the University as one of Michigan’s biggest assets.

“This University is very important,” he said. “The University of Michigan off and on over the last 20 years has been among the top two to three universities in the world in the amount of research it does. We produce more students that go into medicine and into law than any other university in the country, so it’s an incredible asset both in terms of the knowledge it generates and the graduates it produces.”

However, Duderstadt said the gap between what Michigan has and what it needs to become a functioning participant in the new knowledge-driven global economy is significant. He also said it seems no one is willing to provide the means to close that gap, especially when it comes to higher education.

Duderstadt also pointed out that there is a shortage of jobs for Michigan’s college-educated workforce.

“There are a lot of telltale signs, but I think one of the more serious ones is that so many young people from the ages of college graduates through their thirties leave this state and go elsewhere to find jobs because we’re not creating them,” Duderstadt said.

Duderstadt said Michigan’s economic and educational woes are the fault of the state as a whole, but primarily blamed the state government.

“My sense is that Gov. (Jennifer) Granholm understands these issues, but we have a badly divided state government with a Republican-controlled Legislature and a Democratic governor,” he said.

Duderstadt acknowledged that many of the state’s problems are a result of a structural deficit.

“The reason we’re running big budget deficits is that we’re trying to finance a state using a 20th-century tax system for a 21st-century economy,” he said. “Our tax system still assumes that most of the revenue for the state is created through manufacturing, and it isn’t, it’s created through services, and we don’t tax services.”