"Our great history has been that people came to Michigan because you didn't have to have a college degree to get a good-paying job. Consequently, we have got a larger number of our population that right now are facing outsourcing, et cetera, without higher or advanced degrees"
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Jennifer Granholm evokes a proud Michigan story: an economy built by unionized manufacturing where a high school diploma plus grit could deliver a house, a pension, and a middle-class life. The auto industry and its supply chain drew migrants from Appalachia, the American South, and overseas, producing a multiracial working class whose skills were learned on the shop floor rather than in lecture halls. That legacy shaped expectations about what work should provide and what education should cost.
The pride carries a vulnerability. When production shifted across borders and technologies automated tasks, the very advantage of not needing a degree became a liability. A larger share of workers lacked credentials prized in a knowledge economy, leaving them exposed as plants closed or jobs moved. Granholm, governing during the early 2000s downturn and the auto crisis, is diagnosing a structural problem rather than individual failure: an education-to-employment pipeline designed for the mid-20th century colliding with 21st-century globalization and digitization.
Her emphasis on outsourcing captures one force among several. Trade liberalization enabled companies to chase lower labor costs; meanwhile robots and software eroded routine jobs that once paid well. The result was dislocation concentrated in regions like Michigan, where community identity and tax bases were anchored to factories. The quote signals a policy pivot: preserve respect for blue-collar work while expanding pathways to credentials, apprenticeships, and retraining that match advanced manufacturing, clean energy, health care, and tech.
There is also a challenge to simplistic credentialism. The point is not that every good job must require a four-year degree, but that access to skills and certifications must be affordable, flexible, and rapid enough for displaced workers to adapt. Granholm frames a social contract under revision. If the old bargain was a union card and a steady wage, the new one must pair lifelong learning with employers and governments that invest in people as much as in machines, so a proud industrial past can feed a resilient future.
The pride carries a vulnerability. When production shifted across borders and technologies automated tasks, the very advantage of not needing a degree became a liability. A larger share of workers lacked credentials prized in a knowledge economy, leaving them exposed as plants closed or jobs moved. Granholm, governing during the early 2000s downturn and the auto crisis, is diagnosing a structural problem rather than individual failure: an education-to-employment pipeline designed for the mid-20th century colliding with 21st-century globalization and digitization.
Her emphasis on outsourcing captures one force among several. Trade liberalization enabled companies to chase lower labor costs; meanwhile robots and software eroded routine jobs that once paid well. The result was dislocation concentrated in regions like Michigan, where community identity and tax bases were anchored to factories. The quote signals a policy pivot: preserve respect for blue-collar work while expanding pathways to credentials, apprenticeships, and retraining that match advanced manufacturing, clean energy, health care, and tech.
There is also a challenge to simplistic credentialism. The point is not that every good job must require a four-year degree, but that access to skills and certifications must be affordable, flexible, and rapid enough for displaced workers to adapt. Granholm frames a social contract under revision. If the old bargain was a union card and a steady wage, the new one must pair lifelong learning with employers and governments that invest in people as much as in machines, so a proud industrial past can feed a resilient future.
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| Topic | Work |
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