This MinnPost story from Catherine Conlan explains how and why enrollment is rising at Northeastern Minnesota community and technical colleges. Increasingly, I have seen that regional college enrollment and post-graduation job placement taken together and run through a formula might become a good indicator of regional economic strength. It’d make a worthwhile thesis for an economics or planning grad student.

(NOTE: I am an instructor at a NE Minn. community and technical college but this blog is a separate, unaffiliated endeavor).