Nancy Clouse has tried just about everything to make ends meet in Michigan.

The 60-year-old Howard City resident has been a military wife, a convenience store clerk, small-town newspaper editor, factory worker, college student, a field scientist during the Enbridge oil spill on the Kalamazoo River and finally a truck driver.

"I never knew what I wanted to do when I grew up," she says with a laugh.

In hindsight, however, she wishes she had a career like her dad who worked his whole life at the same factory, during what she calls the "golden age" of Michigan's economy, when one job could sustain a family for a generation.

But those jobs are in short supply, MLive's recent Michigan Beyond series revealed, and the economic decline has affected how we educate our children, pave our roads and build our sewers.

Over the past several months, the Michigan Beyond project has investigated the state of our economy, education systems and infrastructure in the lead-up to November's election, where voters will choose a new slate of leaders, including governor.

We've learned a lot about the state of our state. Manufacturing jobs for unskilled worker, once the backbone of our economy, aren't coming back, for instance. There are more jobs in Michigan now than in previous years when we were mired in a recession, but those jobs require more education, which lost funding as lawmakers in Lansing slashed budgets over the years and experimented with alternatives like charter schools.

We learned our infrastructure -- the bridges and roads that connect us, the pipes that deliver the water that bathes us -- are also in need of attention. We learned that in some parts of the Upper Peninsula and other rural ares of our state, high-speed internet is still out of reach.

We've published our findings in more than twenty stories and will continue to engage with the issues and candidates as we head into the election.

We've also sought the response of readers. We wanted to know your plight, your Michigan experience. This is how Clouse and the others interviewed in this story came to us.

SHEDDING JOBS

Clouse recognized something about life when she read the Michigan Beyond series. She said she's watched as the economy changed over the years, starting when her father worked at the Sparta Foundry.

"It was just a factory," she said. "Everyone in my graduating class was like, that's where the jobs were at."

By the time Clouse needed to earn a living, however, those jobs were gone.

Clouse ended up marrying a military man and moving to Hawaii after graduating. While she lived out of state in the 1980s, factory jobs began to vanish.

Our series found the state has shed 68,000 manufacturing jobs from 2005 to 2015. The manufacturing sector, once Michigan's biggest, lost 11 percent of its workforce and 16 percent of its overall payroll.

The entire state's per capita income fell 16 percent from 1999 to 2015, leaving it at $27,405. During that same time, Michigan went from 4 percent above the per capita income for the United States to 8 percent below the national average. While some unskilled jobs have gone to other countries, automation and improved productivity have also played a big role.

In her late 30s, Clouse decided to go back to school. When she graduated from Central Michigan University with her science degree - and $22,000 in student debt - she found the university's career placement office unhelpful, so she grabbed a phone book and started cold calling places. She eventually found work as a field scientist testing water following the Enbridge oil spill on the Kalamazoo River in 2010.

Then Clouse shifted gears. She got her CDL and hit the road with her Shih Tzus, Katie and Anna. She's driven her big rig all across America now, in 46 states.

After a half-dozen different jobs, Clouse feels like she's finally made it and that she's gotten ahead in life.

"I just always had to struggle and scramble for it," she said.

EDUCATION IS KEY

With unskilled, high-paying factory jobs on the decline, experts believe education is the pathway to prosperity.

The skyrocketing costs of education, however, puts people in a pickle. Many people have the option of either staying in a low-paying job or taking out exorbitant loans to go to college. Tuition, fees, room and board averaged $21,832 at a Michigan public university for in-state students in 2016-17. In Michigan, 64 percent of those graduating with a bachelor's degree in 2016 borrowed money and the average amount was $30,327.

Carl Taylor, a science and business teacher at Warren Mott High School, said he felt the need to go to college if he wanted to earn a living, something he's since reconsidered now that he's teaching the next generation.

Taylor recognized his plight - and the uncertain futures of his students - in the Michigan Beyond series.

He thinks public schools in Michigan expend too much time and energy into university preparation rather than getting kids ready for jobs that are in demand like machinists and electrical line workers.

"What our high schoolers think the world is like and what is really out there isn't really matching up," he said. "That don't even realize stuff like that is out there."

Taylor said he's disheartened that the Warren high school where he teaches got rid of the auto program and metals class.

"It really shrunk all these career preparation programs so we could fill in more of the core classes," said Taylor, who lives in Shelby Township with his wife and three kids. "Realistically, I think that was an unbalanced approach."

Taylor thinks there should be more vocational offerings to prepare students for the real workforce.

"The workforce has changed," he said. "We need to change along with it."

TEACHER SHORTAGE

When Taylor graduated from Central Michigan University with a science degree, he worked as a clerk at Family Video.

"It felt like I failed my college education," he said.

He needed to go back to school to get master's degree along with a teacher's certificate to get a teaching job.

Becoming a teacher used to be a solid career path, but the Michigan Beyond series found we're on the brink of a teacher shortage.

In September, the Detroit Public School system, which employs more than 2,600 teachers, had 250 teaching positions still unfilled. The shortage was eventually reduced to 190 but continued to strain teachers and classrooms.

Experts say there needs to be an incentive system in place to keep teachers in districts that have trouble attracting talent.

That would mean an investment in the public educational system, something teachers like Jackie Scott, who taught in the Grand Blanc Community Schools system for 34 years, don't see happening anytime soon.

Scott said faith and funding in public schools is at an all-time low.

"It's really bad," she said after reading the Michigan Beyond series. "It's actually breaking my heart."

Scott thinks state lawmakers don't properly fund schools or respect teachers.

"I think there needs to be a change in the government in Lansing to turn this around," she said.

She blames a lot of the state's educational woes on for-profit charter schools.

"They're going to cut corners," she said. "There's so many things wrong with the charters."

INFRASTRUCTURE

Any resident whose driving on our state's crumbling roads knows that education isn't the only thing being shortchanged in Michigan.

The Michigan Beyond series found an estimated 40 percent of Michigan roads eligible for federal aid are in poor condition - about 35,000 lane miles. Between 2014 and 2017, 16.6 percent of the roads' conditions improved while 19.9 percent declined, meaning more roads are getting worse than are getting better.

Roads are just the beginning of our infrastructure woes, of course. The Flint water crisis highlighted a hidden secret in Michigan - that our water and sewer systems are in desperate need of care and attention. A 2016 report from the 21st Century Infrastructure Commission estimated that Michigan has a $1 billion funding gap for water infrastructure needs.

The lack of high-speed internet is leaving many rural areas behind, too, especially in the sparsely populated Upper Peninsula.

There are 381,000 households in the state that don't have access to fixed broadband internet. About 5.74 percent of Michigan's population - 573,426 people - have no broadband providers in their area.

Lawmakers grasping for plans point out the internet not just for entertainment, but for economic and educational purposes, from banking to personal and work communications.

It's become an issue for politicians to campaign on and governments to study.

POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS

Candidates for a variety of offices are campaigning on these very issues in the run-up to November's election, from the governor's office to the state House and Senate.

So what can leaders do to make sure we're not scrambling for economic opportunities in the future? Furthermore, how can we make sure education and infrastructure are properly funded?

Experts interviewed for the Michigan Beyond series expounded on a few possible solutions to what ails our state.

The simple solution to make sure education and infrastructure is properly funded, according to some experts, is altering the sales tax structure - i.e. raising taxes. This isn't going to be a terribly popular decision among Michigan residents or the politicians trying to get their vote, however.

Experts said a better educated workforce leads to greater prosperity. A person with a bachelor's degree will earn 57 percent more than someone with a high school diploma. That gulf is expected to grow.

Education costs money, however, and the Michigan Beyond series found that Lansing keeps spending less on it.

The decrease in state funding has led to skyrocketing tuition. In 1979, state funding accounted for 70 percent of the university general fund revenue compare with 23 percent in 2015. Schools have hiked tuitions to make up the difference. Average in-state tuition at a Michigan public university was $12,935 this school year, 30 percent above the national average.

An increase in school funding could also help out the little ones, with state-funded preschool for 3-year-olds one idea that would boost both test scores and future economic prosperity.

Michigan leaders also need to be prepared to make unpopular spending choices when it comes to infrastructure, as well, the Beyond series revealed. There is already a plan to spend more than a billion dollars on roads. If politicians stayed the course and spent the money that was already committed, roads would be improved, according to experts.

The Michigan Beyond project

Over the last several months, MLive has explored issues of economy, education and infrastructure, and what Michigan leaders need to do to create a better future. We'd love to hear from you as you navigate life in Michigan. We want to use your voice and your questions to frame the conversation with candidates as we head into midterm elections. Have a story to share, send us an email to michiganbeyond@mlive.com.