It would be nice to tell graduating CMU students they should stay in Michigan.

After all, in a struggling economy that is losing businesses and deep in debt, this state could use all the help it can get.

But unfortunately, the best advice anyone can get regarding this sinking ship of a state is to hop in a life boat and head for Ohio – or anywhere else, for that matter.

Michigan’s leadership is nearly nonexistent. Between Democratic Gov. Jennifer Granholm and Republicans in Michigan’s Legislature, nothing is getting done.

The two parties so far have only cut about $347 million from the state budget to deal with this year’s $940-million shortfall.

The state Senate has spent the last two weeks on vacation.

In the meantime, while Granholm talks out of one side of her mouth about how important higher education is to Michigan’s future, she uses the other side to order a delay in some of CMU’s annual state funds.

While it might just be creative accounting for the sake of saving money on paper, university officials say they don’t expect that money to ever make it to Mount Pleasant.

At the same time, Granholm and the House Higher Education Appropriations Subcommittee, which is six to three Democrats to Republicans and includes Rep. Bill Caul, R-Mount Pleasant, have backed a proposal to sever state funding bills between the University of Michigan, Michigan State and Wayne State and Michigan’s 12 other public universities.

The 12 universities fear this could amount to their losing funding to the three bigger universities in years to come.

Unfortunately, the Michigan government has demonstrated it has neither the strong leadership nor the commitment to anyone at CMU to warrant students sticking around to grab a bucket and try to bail this state out.

If our state’s leadership wants the graduates of this university to stick around and make this state better, they must first give us a reason.

We need to protect ourselves and our future families.

And, right now, it doesn’t seem Michigan will be the place for us.

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