LANSING – Michigan is doing a poor job preparing students for college, ranks below the national average (and low among development nations overall) in the number of college degrees awarded per students, and is a far more expensive state to attend college than others, according to a national report.

The report, from the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, said if the state does not address these trends, “they could undermine the state’s ability to compete successfully in a global economy.”

In fact, the state has started to address a major point of the report, student preparedness, with the approval of tougher high school graduation standards that will require students, beginning with the eighth grade, to take specified credits in science, mathematics, English and other subjects.

The Legislature is also reviewing a proposal to expand the number of students that would be eligible for the Michigan Merit Scholarship.

And in reviewing the status of higher education since 1992, the report did say the state had improved in a number of areas, including preparation for college, completion of degrees and the overall benefits. But the state also showed it had gotten worse in terms of college affordability and had shown no progress in overall participation in college.

Michigan’s status reflected many of the problems the report said were true across the U.S. While among adults 35 and older, the U.S. is a world leader in higher education, it has begun to lose ground to other countries that put a greater emphasis on higher education beginning in the 1990s. During the same time frame, the rate of participation in higher education among Americans was stagnant, the report said.

And the report’s conclusions mirrored, in many respects, those of the Cherry Commission of 2004 that outlined proposals for increasing the number of college graduates in the state. The Cherry Commission was chaired by Lt. Governor John Cherry. Governor Jennifer Granholm has said it is her goal to double the number of college graduates in the state.

This week Lou Glazer of Michigan Future published a study that showed the states with the highest per capita income had the highest rate of college of graduates.

The area the report said Michigan did the worst in was college affordability, although it shared the low grade with 42 other states. Since 1992, the amount of a median family’s income that would have to go to pay for tuition and other college costs increased significantly.

In 1992, for example, it took 28 percent of a median family income to pay for a year’s expenses at a public four-year university. By 2006, that was up to 36 percent of a median family’s income.

The report also said the state’s investment in “need-based financial aid is very low when compared to top performing states.”

In terms of students participating in higher education, the report said the chance that a high school student will enroll in college by age 19 is relatively low and has declined since 1992. In that year, 41 percent of young adults had a chance for college; by 2006 that fell to 38 percent, a number dictated by a smaller number of students graduating from high school. In the top states nationwide, the percentage is 53 percent.

However, the report said that 42 percent of people between the ages of 18 and 24 were enrolled in college in Michigan, slightly above the 41 percent national average.

The report also said there was a relatively high number of older adults who were enrolled in some college and training program, though that percentage had declined by 18 percent.

Mike Boulus of the President’s Council of the State Universities of Michigan said the report indicated the state had improved in some overall areas, and he questioned whether the assessment on affordability was fair given that most the states did flunk.

He did say that lowered state support of higher education has had an effect on the overall costs since the state pays for less than one-third of the cost of college education that it did in the 1970s.

And he said the report is correct in the concern it raises about the state’s economy and higher education. “We have worked very hard to hone the point that college education leads to prosperity,” Boulus said. “It think we’ve made the point,” saying that was one reason why the universities got an increase in their state appropriation for the 2006-07 budget.