Tagged: michigan state university

More than a million Michiganders will be traveling during the Fourth of July holiday period. Many of them made hotel reservations online.

A Michigan State University professor says making online hotel reservations is an unsatisfactory experience for many people.

EAST LANSING, Mich. (AP) - Michigan State University has dropped mandatory health insurance for students after opposition from lawmakers.

Officials said Friday that insurance available through the school will be voluntary, but they'll still ask if students have coverage this fall. Only 320 students were automatically signed up last year.

But one of them was the son of a state lawmaker, Rep. Jeff Farrington, R-Utica, who got a bill. It turned out that Farrington's son had insurance.

It’s going to cost the average Michigan State University student $210 more to attend the fall semester.

The MSU Trustees today approved a 3.5 percent tuition increase for next year.  

The increase will be slightly higher for out-of-state students.

Lou Anna Simon is president of MSU. She says no one wants to raise college tuition.

“There are stories about students who are definitely in debt at a higher level than they should be,” Simon told the MSU Board of Trustees before the vote.

Other Michigan public colleges and universities also approved tuition hikes this week, including the University of Michigan and Michigan Tech.

A new Michigan State University study finds the brains of “anxious” womens work much harder, but no better than others.    The study’s authors say their findings could help diagnose and treat women with “anxiety disorders."

Michiganders are becoming more optimistic about the economy and that positive thinking is adding a bit of extra shine to Gov. Rick Snyder's image.

That's according to new results out today from Michigan State University's State of the State Survey.

An MSU press release says state residents haven't been this positive about the economy since 2005, with 54 percent of survey participants  characterizing their financial situation as "good" or "excellent" and 61 percent expecting things to get even better in the year to come.

More from MSU:

"The Michigan economy has added 150,000 jobs since the job market bottomed out at the end of 2009," said Charles Ballard, MSU economics professor and director of the State of the State Survey. "The improvement in the economy is reflected in the brighter mood in our latest survey."

The findings are based on the latest quarterly phone survey conducted from Feb. 14 to April 15. A total of 963 Michigan adults were questioned in the survey which has an error rating of +3.16 percent.

In the fall 2011 survey, conducted from mid-September through early November, only 46.2 percent of those answering the survey called their financial situation "excellent" or "good."

Gov. Snyder's approval ratings also improved amongst those surveyed, rising to 33 percent compared with 19.3 percent last fall.

- John Klein Wilson, Michigan Radio Newsroom

A new Michigan State University study finds the peak of teen misuse of prescription drugs comes earlier than previously believed.

MSU researchers say teen misuse of prescription drugs peaks at age 16, not the later teens as previously believed.   Many children start using pain killers and other prescription drugs to get high in their tweens.   

The MSU study shows about 1 in 60 young people between 12 and 21 years old starts abusing prescription pain relievers each year.    That ratio rises to roughly 1 in 30 at age 16.  

Jim Anthony is a professor of Epidemiology at MSU.    He says the study shows it’s important to get the public health message against misusing prescription drugs to children when they are in middle school.

“We don’t want to delay public health programs…until the high school years or college years," says Anthony,   "We want to begin to think about them as early as 12 and 13.”

Anthony says it may also be a good idea for doctors to write some pain killer prescriptions for just a few day supply instead of the more common one or two week supply.   He says that might reduce the number of prescription drugs that sit unused in the family medicine cabinet.  

Anthony says parents need to pay close attention to their teenager and their medicine cabinet and properly dispose of unneeded painkillers and other prescription drugs.

The MSU study appears in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.