Business & Economy

New push aims to close skills gap between graduates and jobs

By |

By BRIDGET BUSH
Capital News Service
LANSING – Michigan lawmakers, university officials and local school systems have taken up the fight to improve how well the state’s students learn to be high tech producers and consumers. Just this fall, Michigan State University redesigned a course that will teach 175 student teachers to incorporate computational thinking into curriculum. And the university is offering a new graduate certificate in creative computing to about 250 teachers for professional development. Aman Yadav, MSU associate professor of counseling, educational psychology and special education and director of its Masters of Arts in Educational Technology program, sees the greater purpose of this new approach to be “moving students from consumers of technology to creators and producers.”
Meanwhile,  lawmakers are considering a bill that would allow computer programming to count as a foreign language or arts requirement. The bill was approved by the House in May and is in the Senate Committee on Education.

Education

Michigan legislature split on how to handle college tuition

By |

By RAY WILBUR
Capital News Service
LANSING — Michigan officials are weighing their options for solutions to a university funding crisis that saddles the state’s students with the ninth-highest average debt in the country. That’s how the Michigan League for Public Policy recently ranked the state in a report that shows state support of universities dropping 30 percent since 2003. The revelations are not surprising. In 2011 Gov. Rick Snyder cut higher education funding by 15 percent, the league said. That came after years of smaller cuts caused by the nationwide recession.