STATE OF OPPORTUNITY. Can Kids in Michigan Get Ahead?
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This special reporting project wrapped up in May 2017. Read more.

Michigan last in Midwest in per-student college aid

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There's been a huge push by the Snyder administration to push high-schools to get all their high-schoolers "college ready."

Families bank accounts are less college ready. And according to a new report the state is cutting back on funds available to help kids pay for college costs, costs that just keep going up and up.

This belt-tightening isn't happening everywhere. In fact, Michigan is almost the stingiest state in the Midwest with college aid. (If it makes you feel better, it comes in second to Ohio.)

Here are some other highlights, if you can call them that, from the report. It says that over the last decade Michigan lawmakers have:

  • Cut need-based grants by 20 percent while other states increased their need-based grants.
  • Invested the least in grant dollars per student in the Midwest.
  • Offered grants to only 14 percent of students
  • Gave a large share of need-based grants to students from higher-income families attending private colleges.

And the takeaway? Michigan is now investing the least in college per-student and per-person in the Midwest. Hopefully high-school math classes are including problems about interest rates on college loans as part of that college ready curriculum.

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