Detroit’s Class Act

Back in August this article was written Detroit’s Class Act as part of Fortune’s Assignment: Detroit series.  It cuts at the core of the issue for any future problem this country faces: Education.  Education is the base, the foundation, to build ANYTHING in this country (or anywhere for that matter) – in particular Opportunity.  America is the land of opportunity, but with failing school systems, what kind of opportunity is Detroit’s (or any poor community) youth really getting?  Or Detroit for that matter?

$300 million was turned down to fund Detroit charter schools because of in-fighting.  At least the money wasn’t taken and wasted, but if $300 million cannot help unite, what can?

Thus deeper issues of our blended economical and political structure in this country has also come to light.  When this country is founded on competition and constant innovation – how can a government controlled institution (Education) become better without competitive pressure? (Unless they really take to heart the product their producing – students- is competing in the global market…) The military uses outside corporations for weapon and defense development.

I work in the technology sector and we focus on the Education market (K – University) and we have found that teachers who use technology are the small percentage of all educators out there and that classrooms in 2010 look very familiar to the ones in the 1950′s.  What else looks like that in this country?

Gen Y on Banks

I’ve done some recent research and work on better understanding Gen Y as a consumer market and Yahoo Finance posted a good article on Gen Y’s sentiments on banks.

Moral of the story?  Gen Y is fluent in information gathering and has higher expectations on products and especially services than previous generations.

Further insight: The US has evolved from a manufacturing based economy to a service economy.   We (the US) do this better than any other country… just like we used to do manufacturing better than anyone.

State New’s report on our Gen Y Auto Sustainability Research

Mileage means more than ‘greenness’ to Generation Y: http://statenews.com/index.php/article/2010/01/mileage_means_more_than_greenness_to_generation_y?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

Gen Y and Auto Sustainability (my presentation piece)

Gen Y and Auto Sustainability

Go easy on the environment and our wallets, says Gen Y http://news.msu.edu/story/7321/