Amazon

Amazon came out and said that Detroit was not making into the top 20 places because of two major reasons mass transit and talent. When asked on the issues spokesperson for Detroit said “Detroit’s lack of a robust regional transit network hurt, but wasn’t pivotal. The defining role was talent”

By talent being so vague it actually umbrellaed a ton of issues from K-12 education to lack of tech-savvy graduates, and the ability to retain the talent our universities develop here. In fact, we were in the bottom two of all cities that applied for young adults who hold a bachelor’s degree or higher with a whopping 34% of people. (Boston 58%, Nashville 42%, Washington 54%)

There are tons of reasons why this could have happened, from poverty in metro Detroit, income gaps that directly influence graduation rates, financial cutbacks in state aid, the massive recession, and the alike. However the reasons shouldn’t be the focus, it is super easy to speculate why the rates and data are the way they are but in reality that isn’t the focus. The responsibility is for us to keep preparing kids to fill the talent gaps that exist.

One cool stat that came out of this whole process though was from the Census Bureau saying that the percentage of Detroiters age 25-34 who held degrees grew by 11% from 2013-2016 which was a much faster rate than numerous other cities that are in the top 20 for Amazon. (Boston, Chicago, New York, etc)

Obviously, this is not a Hutchings Elementary issue, but we can be a part of the solution. We can immerse students into technology, we can promote Genius Hour / Wonder Workshop, we can teach them critical thinking and problem solving, and we can put them on the right path to those tech-savvy, problem-based jobs that companies are clearly looking for.