Howes: MI's Big Three schools bolster Detroit's revival
Detroit News columnist Daniel Howes wrote: “A friend recently observed that one reason Detroit could never again be a great city is because it cannot claim a great university. No, it arguably claims three — Michigan State, the University of Michigan and Wayne State, which is anchored deeply in the Midtown neighborhood it is helping to reshape. Together, they make one of the leading university clusters in the United States, critical resources for drawing talent and exploiting economic change. The schools have grown progressively more intertwined over the past decade in state economic development efforts, the revival of Detroit and cooperative strategies to leverage their respective strengths through something called the University Research Corridor…Ties to the universities helped secure Detroit’s selection for the Lightweight Innovations for Tomorrow Center and the Institute for Advanced Composites Manufacturing Innovation — both symbols that Detroit can manufacture the future, not just the present and the past. And the engineering capability of all three is a vital component of the mobility strategy that state and auto industry leaders are crafting to create the American Center for Mobility in Ypsilanti and to build Michigan’s statewide “Planet M” brand around all things mobility.”
