DETROIT – Saying Michigan’s economic future is dependent on having more people with higher educational skills, the group Business Leaders for Michigan is stepping up efforts to restore, ultimately, another $1 billion to higher education funding to the state.

Doing so would help erase much of the funding cuts Michigan’s 15 public four- year universities have struggled with in the last decade, said Doug Rothwell, president of the organization. In 2001, state spending accounted for slightly less than 50 percent of Michigan university revenues, but in the current 2012-13 fiscal year it accounts for less than 25 percent.

Tuition and fees went from about 45 percent to more than 70 percent during the same time.

Statistics show that state spending per college student fell by 35 percent during the last decade, Rothwell said.

But improving higher education is not the only investment the state needs to make to improve its economy, he said. The organization is also pushing for additional spending on early childhood education and on the state’s infrastructure.

Pushing more investment in higher education could have some of the biggest payoffs for the state, not only in terms of filling jobs that are open now, but providing for a future workforce and attracting more people into the state as students.

The message the BLM is now sending is not in itself new. Under the administration of former Governor Jennifer Granholm, a commission run by former Lt. Governor John Cherry called for doubling the number of residents with four-year degrees. And Senate Democrats have already vowed to re-introduce their Michigan 2020 plan, which would essentially allow eligible high school graduates to go to college tuition-free.

Numerous studies released over the last decade have also found the states with the highest percentage of college graduates tend to have the highest per capita incomes.

Higher education took a major budget hit over the last decade as Michigan citizens wanted to protect funding for K-12 education.

“You could make the arguments that we have taken that too far,” Rothwell said. A decade ago the public did not recognize the importance of higher education, he said, and now it does.

Rothwell said Michigan companies will need 900,000 workers with more than a high school degree by 2020. And while the state has thousands of job openings now, at least 80 percent of them – in fields like nursing, accounting, education, engineering and computer systems – need at least an associate’s degree.

Recently, General Motors opened an information technology center in Atlanta, Georgia, because of the number of persons with those skills in that market.

Ideally, Rothwell said in an interview, the state would add $100 million a year for the next 10 years to the base of higher education funding. Getting the revenue could depend on the overall growth state revenues and reducing expenditures in other areas, such as the Department of Corrections.

But Rothwell also said it would not be possible to get all the revenue needed just from the Department of Corrections.

The public now recognizes both how important higher education is to individual students and the economy, as well as the problems excess debt to pay for tuition causes students.

And singling out Sen. Tonya Schuitmaker (R-Lawton) and Rep. John Walsh (R-Livonia), Rothwell said legislators are also recognizing the need to put more funding into universities. Schuitmaker is the chair of the Senate Appropriations Higher Education Subcommittee. Walsh is expected to be named the new chair of the House Appropriations Higher Education Subcommittee.

In the current budget, the state added $36 million in one-time money to the universities if they showed certain results. Those include overall degrees awarded, degrees in certain key areas and overall administrative efficiency.

While Rothwell said the move was encouraging, one-time money does not provide universities with the ability to plan or restrain tuition costs.

He also said the measurements should be changed to look at a university’s overall performance, not just progress in achieving certain measures.

Michigan’s 15 four-year universities compare well nationwide in terms of overall cost efficiencies, Rothwell said. What they could not make up for was the massive cut in overall state revenues.

Rothwell also said the effort to boost college graduates should not be focused just on the so-called STEM – science, technology, engineering and mathematics – fields. University educations provide well-rounded educations, and provide students with critical thinking skills necessary for economic development.

Not only do Michigan universities need more money, Rothwell said, they need more students. And not all the students needed can come from Michigan, in part because there aren’t enough of them.

Michigan universities are among the lowest in the nation in terms of attracting out of state students, he said.

If state schools attracted out-of-state students on average basis, compared to other states, it would mean an additional $200 million to the universities and statewide as much as another $1 billion in overall economic spending in the state, he said.

“Those are big numbers,” Rothwell said.

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