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The largest UM alumni group is also the UM Club of Greater Detroit, but still. Retention at the state's two flagships isn't great and that is where the brain drain is becoming an issue. It is great that we are retaining more and more kids from all of our colleges, but Amazon and it's ilk can afford to be choosers and they are never going to be impressed by the number of local U graduates from second tier schools.
If Detroit's talent pool size was the problem, why are there cities in the top 20 with less college grads than Detroit? there are over 1,000,000 college grads living here and I know off the top of my head 3 cities on that list that don't have 1 million college grads.
Companies typically give more weight to the ratio of college grads rather than the raw number of college grads. That 1 million number doesn't look so impressive when you consider that's only about 20% of the entire Metro Detroit population. Compare that to a city like Raleigh which only has a population of 500,000, but 50% of its residents have at least a bachelors degree.
That's all fine and good, but public transportation is like bailing water out of the Titanic if you don't have a skilled workforce.
I think Detroit (and the region) needs to take a long, hard look at what makes a city attractive.
Obviously for a young, talented workforce, the top priority would generally be jobs. Then a safe place to live close to the jobs. And then fun things to do after hours. I think the state and region have the 3rd thing covered fairly well. Michigan is an outdoorsman's paradise, and despite the dreadful winter months, there's generally a lot of things that you can do for recreation.
The safety part is a work in progress. I think the city has become much safer as it is continuing to gentrify in certain areas. But the reputation is what really harms it. And reputation is a difficult thing to build back up. It's going to take more time and lots of good PR/marketing.
The jobs part. Well, that's what this thread is about after all. You need jobs to attract talent, but you need talent to attract jobs. It's a classic chicken and egg scenario. Detroit was blessed with some local companies setting up HQ downtown. But companies like Quicken, Compuware, and the rest likely gave Detroit the hometown discount. The real question is how to attract those big hitters who have no vested interest in the region as it is. This is where it gets tricky.
The region/state probably needs to do some market research on recent grads and those who've left to ask them what incentives it would take to lure them to stay in the region. Jobs obviously being the most important. You can't live somewhere if you can't afford to pay the bills. It's why I ultimately ended up leaving. Now that the region is on the up and up, I almost convinced my fiance in moving to the region. Unfortunately, we ended up sticking around here. But it was definitely back on our radar. I wouldn't have said that 10 years ago
I personally think it's going to take more time to shake the old reputation and build a new one. Minneapolis, Chicago and Columbus have just as bad of a climate as Detroit, and yet they are bustling Midwest cities. Heck, outside of the country music scene, Nashville was not even a blip on the radar 10 or 20 years ago. So if they can make it happen, I really think Detroit can as well.
I didn't expect Detroit to be picked but to not make the top 20 over some of these other cities are questionable. Some of the metro areas were picked more than once (NYC and DC). I knew the lack of mass transit and the reputation of Detroit would probably be the deal breaker.
The free press wrote this up completely wrong. I read articles from I believe the Detroit news and Crains Detroit that said that Amazon's concern was Detroit ATTRACTING talent. Those are 2 different things. It was said that they called Detroit's bid leaders and let them know that they were very impressed by the data and how well the project was put together and how united the entire region was (I'm sure they said that crap to all of the other 200 rejections as well) but their main concerns were no plans for a mass transit system and questionable ability to attract talent. They said had this been a few more years where Detroit's comeback was a little more "established" it might have been a different story.
Here is one of the articles I was reading about Detroit ATTRACTING more talent Why Amazon didn
If Detroit's talent pool size was the problem, why are there cities in the top 20 with less college grads than Detroit? there are over 1,000,000 college grads living here and I know off the top of my head 3 cities on that list that don't have 1 million college grads.
UofM attracts people from all over the world and jobs all over the country have bidding wars over UofM grads, so it's unlikely that more than half of them will stay in MI unless a job in MI was offering them the most money. That's kind of a different story. But most Michigan State grads stay in MI, hell the largest MSU alumni population is right here in Detroit. If I'm not mistaking the largest Western Michigan University alumni population is right here in Detroit as well and most Western grads stay in MI. With the exception of UofM, this is probably the story for most colleges and universities in Michigan.
I concur with your analysis. I thought the same thing in regards to absolute numbers.
One concern I have is this, however. How was "metro Detroit" defined? The office of management and budget (OMB) MSA definition of Detroit does not include Ann Arbor. Detroit get narrowly defined because of low rates of committing into the core counties, but if you use the same footprint as say metro Atlanta...or even the Twin Cities Metro, then the area includes Ann Arbor and is well above 5 million in population.
Metro Detroit being defined and analyzed without Ann Arbor included can really change some statistics for the worse. I mean.....if they had 3 different definition of the DC area......just how was Detroit defined for the people crunching the numbers at Amazon? I am sure that they were using their own definitions and not the definitions provided by bid leaders who are often hyperbolic about their areas. Hence, my guess is that they just used MSA definitions. I could be wrong....of course.
Companies typically give more weight to the ratio of college grads rather than the raw number of college grads. That 1 million number doesn't look so impressive when you consider that's only about 20% of the entire Metro Detroit population. Compare that to a city like Raleigh which only has a population of 500,000, but 50% of its residents have at least a bachelors degree.
If that's the case then why don't more companies move to Ann Arbor which blows even NYC out of the water when it comes to percentage of college grads? Don't get me wrong what your saying makes since, but at the end of the day, no matter how impressive the percentage is, Detroit has literally twice as many college grads as Raleigh. The talent "pool" is twice as large in Detroit then it is in Raleigh. I'm just saying, you can't say the talent pool is too small and then go on to have multiple cities in the top 20 that have an even smaller talent pool.
But like the other link I posted said, I believe it's more so Detroit's terrible reputation and it's questionable ability to attract talent.
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The safety part is a work in progress. I think the city has become much safer as it is continuing to gentrify in certain areas. But the reputation is what really harms it. And reputation is a difficult thing to build back up. It's going to take more time and lots of good PR/marketing.
I just heard this quote not too long ago, it goes "it takes years to build a reputation, it takes minutes to ruin it". Just do a google image search of the 20 cities selected, and then do a google image search of Detroit. The national media is Metro Detroit's biggest enemy. Just like people in other cities are always real shocked when they hear that Detroit's metro area doesn't even make the top 10 worst when it comes to crime rates, they are also shocked to hear which metro areas are more dangerous then Metro Detroit. Safety really isn't that much of an issue outside of the city itself as opposed to other metro areas that might have more gentrified areas inside of the city to bring crime rates down but have plenty of dangerous suburbs.
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I concur with your analysis. I thought the same thing in regards to absolute numbers.
One concern I have is this, however. How was "metro Detroit" defined? The office of management and budget (OMB) MSA definition of Detroit does not include Ann Arbor. Detroit get narrowly defined because of low rates of committing into the core counties, but if you use the same footprint as say metro Atlanta...or even the Twin Cities Metro, then the area includes Ann Arbor and is well above 5 million in population.
Metro Detroit being defined and analyzed without Ann Arbor included can really change some statistics for the worse. I mean.....if they had 3 different definition of the DC area......just how was Detroit defined for the people crunching the numbers at Amazon? I am sure that they were using their own definitions and not the definitions provided by bid leaders who are often hyperbolic about their areas. Hence, my guess is that they just used MSA definitions. I could be wrong....of course.
That could be it as well. It wouldn't surprise me. I mean yea most of the 20 selections make since but some of the cities on there I can't believe were selected over Detroit. That's the only thing that really bothers me, but I still support Amazon because they have a pretty good relationship with Detroit. Could you imagine if Amazon choose Detroit out of the 200+ bids? they would have alot of explaining to do to the stockholders and national media who would be ready to ridicule them for choosing "big bad Detroit".
But it's like you said in a earlier post and what I've been saying for years. Nobody from the outside is going to help Detroit until our reputation is fixed so the outsiders can feel "comfortable". In the meantime, were on our own. We have to continue to come together for the greater good of the region. I think we should take the tax breaks and grants and whatever else that we were going to give amazon and invest it in Detroit businesses and companies big or small who don't need an incentive to come or stay here. The next "Amazon" or "Apple" could be right here in Detroit, let's help them grow.
If that's the case then why don't more companies move to Ann Arbor which blows even NYC out of the water when it comes to percentage of college grads? Don't get me wrong what your saying makes since, but at the end of the day, no matter how impressive the percentage is, Detroit has literally twice as many college grads as Raleigh. The talent "pool" is twice as large in Detroit then it is in Raleigh. I'm just saying, you can't say the talent pool is too small and then go on to have multiple cities in the top 20 that have an even smaller talent pool.
But like the other link I posted said, I believe it's more so Detroit's terrible reputation and it's questionable ability to attract talent.
I just heard this quote not too long ago, it goes "it takes years to build a reputation, it takes minutes to ruin it". Just do a google image search of the 20 cities selected, and then do a google image search of Detroit. The national media is Metro Detroit's biggest enemy. Just like people in other cities are always real shocked when they hear that Detroit's metro area doesn't even make the top 10 worst when it comes to crime rates, they are also shocked to hear which metro areas are more dangerous then Metro Detroit. Safety really isn't that much of an issue outside of the city itself as opposed to other metro areas that might have more gentrified areas inside of the city to bring crime rates down but have plenty of dangerous suburbs.
That could be it as well. It wouldn't surprise me. I mean yea most of the 20 selections make since but some of the cities on there I can't believe were selected over Detroit. That's the only thing that really bothers me, but I still support Amazon because they have a pretty good relationship with Detroit. Could you imagine if Amazon choose Detroit out of the 200+ bids? they would have alot of explaining to do to the stockholders and national media who would be ready to ridicule them for choosing "big bad Detroit".
But it's like you said in a earlier post and what I've been saying for years. Nobody from the outside is going to help Detroit until our reputation is fixed so the outsiders can feel "comfortable". In the meantime, were on our own. We have to continue to come together for the greater good of the region. I think we should take the tax breaks and grants and whatever else that we were going to give amazon and invest it in Detroit businesses and companies big or small who don't need an incentive to come or stay here. The next "Amazon" or "Apple" could be right here in Detroit, let's help them grow.
I did not think of that. That is an excellent suggestion.
If that's the case then why don't more companies move to Ann Arbor which blows even NYC out of the water when it comes to percentage of college grads? Don't get me wrong what your saying makes since, but at the end of the day, no matter how impressive the percentage is, Detroit has literally twice as many college grads as Raleigh. The talent "pool" is twice as large in Detroit then it is in Raleigh. I'm just saying, you can't say the talent pool is too small and then go on to have multiple cities in the top 20 that have an even smaller talent pool.
Ann Arbor is quite a stretch compared to a city like Raleigh. You're talking about a city that doesn't even have its own airport. However, Ann Arbor punches far above its weight class when you look at the employers who have a major presence there. I think that further drives home my point.
The largest UM alumni group is also the UM Club of Greater Detroit, but still. Retention at the state's two flagships isn't great and that is where the brain drain is becoming an issue. It is great that we are retaining more and more kids from all of our colleges, but Amazon and it's ilk can afford to be choosers and they are never going to be impressed by the number of local U graduates from second tier schools.
Michigan has a 75% retention rate of MSU grads, that isn't that good? Michigan's economy isn't exactly on par with Texas when it comes to job growth.
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I did not think of that. That is an excellent suggestion.
It's a good way for us to help ourselves. If you seen how many wanna be Dan Gilbert's are out here it's probably actually the best option. Those will be the type of companies that remembered when Detroit helped them grow and will return the favor when they're on top.
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Ann Arbor is quite a stretch compared to a city like Raleigh. You're talking about a city that doesn't even have its own airport. However, Ann Arbor punches far above its weight class when you look at the employers who have a major presence there. I think that further drives home my point.
Ann Arbor has Metro Airport. But fair enough. My point was Ann Arbor has a tiny talent pool (despite it's impressive percentage) compared to much larger cities that don't have an impressive percentage. There are twice as many qualified candidates in Detroit then it is in Raleigh especially when you include Ann Arbor and Windsor in the bid.
Let’s face it. On a national level, not too many people or companies want to move in or around Detroit. Why would they? The boring, flat landscape? The horrible roads? The sub-par schools? The bad weather? The crime? The lack of public transportation? If I were on the outside looking in, there’s no way I’d move to Detroit. Is anyone really surprised that Amazon has no desire to move here either? This was an unrealistic pipe dream from the start. Detroit has a few pros but a ton of cons (no pun intended).
I knew the lack of mass transit and the reputation of Detroit would probably be the deal breaker.
That mass transit issue is quite interesting when looking at the top 20 cities/locations. Obviously, Detroit is lacking in light/heavy rail, but if you look the list:
Austin - one commuter rail line/no light rail
Columbus - no light rail, trying to get a plan together
Indianapolis - no light rail, trying to get a plan together
Nashville - no light rail, trying to get a measure on the May ballot to increase sales tax to pay for $3 Billion of light rail
The Triangle - no light rail, but Chapel Hill/Durham did pass a tax increase to build a 17.7 mile light rail line, but it won't even connect to RTP and won't open until 2028
It seems that Amazon definitely "gave a pass" to some of its top 20 finalist, in regards to mass transit/light rail, since some of those places it could be decades, if ever, to get a light rail system built and running.
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