States Turn to Colleges to Help Reinvent Economies and Retrain Workers

mid west

Fabrizio Costantini for the Chronicle

Students work in a garage/lab on the campus of Macomb Community College in Warren, MI. Macomb Community College, outside Detroit, has long had a mission that is “narrow and deep," says its president. The college serves as the training ground for all manner of auto industry workers, from auto-parts manufacturing to autobody design.

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close mid west

Fabrizio Costantini for the Chronicle

Students work in a garage/lab on the campus of Macomb Community College in Warren, MI. Macomb Community College, outside Detroit, has long had a mission that is “narrow and deep," says its president. The college serves as the training ground for all manner of auto industry workers, from auto-parts manufacturing to autobody design.

Deserted factories and dying Midwestern industrial towns have become well-worn symbols of the nation's economic woes. Indeed, as economies that once thrived on manufacturing continued to deteriorate, revenues tumbled in many Midwestern states in 2009. Unemployment rates climbed well into double-digit percentages in Detroit, the Motor City, and smaller towns like Elkhart, Ind., the self-proclaimed RV Capital of the World. Two of the Big Three automakers filed for bankruptcy protection and

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