Months of leading the other 49 states in the crucial contest of who has the highest unemployment rate and year after year of ballooning budget deficits have been enough to convince Gov. Jennifer Granholm to say all the right things regarding the state’s future. But these ominous statistics have apparently not been enough to convince her to do almost any of the things necessary to reinvent Michigan’s economy.

Granholm has called for a shift from the state’s dependence on traditional manufacturing industries to more high-tech sectors, including the life sciences. She says she wants to make Michigan a place where young, highly educated people desire to come live and work. Her specific proposals, however, have been insignificant, uncontroversial and therefore unable to stem the tide of college graduates moving elsewhere to attend college and find jobs after school. By failing to take a strong stand on issues like stem-cell research, higher-education funding and gay rights, Granholm relegates her stated goals to mere pablum.

Part of Granholm’s vision comes from the writings of economic development Prof. Richard Florida, who defined the “creative class” as the fast-growing group of educated workers who are paid for their ideas rather than their labor; the group composes about 30 percent of the country’s workforce, yet earns roughly half of all wages and salaries. Florida argues that the best way for a region to attract new, high-tech industries is to draw in a large pool of young, educated, creative workers. The governor’s Cool Cities initiative shows that Granholm acknowledges and covets this creative sector; the published reasoning behind the initiative cites Florida frequently. But simply throwing a few grants at small-scale, scattered projects is no way to attract and retain the educated workforce Michigan needs. In more important areas, Granholm has so far failed to take the risks necessary to turn Michigan into a progressive state capable of attracting creative young workers and fertile new industries.

If Michigan’s economy is to expand into the life-sciences industry, an idea Granholm regularly promotes, it is impossible to avoid the issue of stem cells. Granholm claims to support stem-cell research, but she has shied away from efforts to change Michigan’s stem-cell laws, which are among the most restrictive in the country. The state’s restrictions not only directly impede development of Michigan’s life-sciences industry, but they also suggest to current and would-be residents that the state is unwilling to adapt to future technological advances. Granholm may have a difficult battle against Republicans to pass more progressive stem-cell legislation in Michigan, but she should recognize that supporting stem-cell research is necessary to developing a strong life-sciences industry.

Similarly, Granholm has made higher education a rhetorical centerpiece in her vision for the state’s economy — she claims it is her goal to double the number of college graduates in the state within a decade — but she has balked at reforming how the state’s higher-education system is funded. Universities receive money from the state’s discretionary fund, leaving them an easy target for funding cuts when falling revenues force Lansing to balance the state budget. As a result, Michigan’s universities are struggling at a time when the state needs them to thrive. Just as Silicon Valley could not exist without Stanford University, a high-tech revival in Michigan depends largely on the state’s universities. Granholm must take action quickly if she wants to even preserve, let alone improve, the state’s higher-education system. Budget restructuring and unpopular tax increases may be required, but if Granholm hopes to come close to achieving her goals, she must find a bold and creative solution to the higher-education problem.