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New Report: "A Well-Educated Workforce Is Key to State Prosperity"

Our guest on this edition of ST is Peter Fisher, research director at the Iowa Policy Project, who co-wrote a recently published paper, "A Well-Educated Workforce Is Key to State Prosperity," for the Economic Analysis and Research Network. This network is a project of the Economic Policy Institute, or EPI, which defines itself as "a nonpartisan think tank that seeks to broaden the public debate about strategies to achieve a prosperous and fair economy." Fisher's report affirms that the educational attainment of a given state's workforce is clearly and consistently linked with both productivity and median wages in that state --- and thus this report was referred to by David Blatt, our friend and colleague at the Oklahoma Policy Institute, in a blog entry that he posted last week. As Fisher explains in our via-telephone interview, whether we're talking about Iowa, Oklahoma, or any other state in the union, investing in education --- as opposed to, say, offering tax breaks --- is, from a statistical standpoint, the first and best step on the path to prosperity.

Rich Fisher passed through KWGS about thirty years ago, and just never left. Today, he is the general manager of Public Radio Tulsa, and the host of KWGS’s public affairs program, StudioTulsa, which celebrated its twentieth anniversary in August 2012 . As host of StudioTulsa, Rich has conducted roughly four thousand long-form interviews with local, national, and international figures in the arts, humanities, sciences, and government. Very few interviews have gone smoothly. Despite this, he has been honored for his work by several organizations including the Governor's Arts Award for Media by the State Arts Council, a Harwelden Award from the Arts & Humanities Council of Tulsa, and was named one of the “99 Great Things About Oklahoma” in 2000 by Oklahoma Today magazine.
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