How did the University of Michigan become such an academic powerhouse?
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Anonymous
| It’s not competing with privates for in-state students, they have an excellent hospital (provides research experience), and trustees are elected by the public. Also, in the past generation, it didn’t discriminate against Jewish applicants - nowadays, it doesn’t discriminate against Asian applicants. The pp who mentioned donors is correct - if you look at the list of top donors, they are overwhelmingly Jewish - Stephen Ross, Alfred Taubman, Sam Zell, etc. It also may get a lot of OOS applicants because as the state of Michigan has declined, alumni have ended up out of state and their kids apply. |
Anonymous
Obviously the performance of the football team is the best indicator of undergraduate education quality. Not. |
Anonymous
I think UT Austin's endowment is larger when the funds from the land they have in West Texas is factored. |
Anonymous
The endowment is larger, but there are many campuses to maintain. Michigan has 3, with Ann Arbor by far receiving the most $$$. Texas has 240,000 students as compared to around 60,000 at Michigan. |
Anonymous
The point is that many of the reasons cited for Michigan's rise stemmed from the state of Michigan's economy back in the day. If true, then why wouldn't MSU see a similar boost? Just playing Devil's advocate. In other words, is that really the reason for the rise or is it something else. The automakers have invested in both universities. Granted, Ann Arbor is closer to the Detroit, but Lansing is not much farther. So are other factors at play? Maybe that Michigan attracted more out-of-state students than MSU (precisely because MSU was a land-grant) school. It's interesting to see how the two evolved. |
Anonymous
Not the best indicator, but having a good sports team to root for is just another perk. |
Anonymous
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The posts so far cover it, really -
Major money and major culture in the Detroit region a century ago Inclusive to Jews - yes, many of whom were from the northeast/NYC, and with a great education and religious philanthropic tenants, became both successful in their careers and big donors Major research opportunities Compelling college campus Multiple competitive grad/professional schools No major regional competition from privates No major regional competition from other state schools across the original Big Ten And Michigan State is a perfectly nice school, but it’s the ag school, and not one of the other original ag schools in the US that also later became a meaningful engineering player (such as NC State did) or another differentiator. Michigan is the engineering school in the state. Completely different history from MSU and the other midwestern state schools. |
Anonymous
I feel like you’re not following the part where MSU was originally the farm school. It’s a good school and offers a lot more, but it has a completely different history from UM. |
Anonymous
Probably getting $$ from UVA or were not admitted to U of M. |
Anonymous
The UT money isn't split evenly between campuses. A large percentage is for UT Austin. |
Anonymous
Of course not. However 30 billion spread out of 1/4 of a million students doesn’t go as far as 18 billion to 60,000 |
Anonymous
Over half of the payout from the $33B fund goes to UT Austin operations plus all of $5.7B held by its schools. That is about $22B for 51K students. UT Austin also gets additional money from that fund to pay construction bonds. |
Anonymous
With all that money, it should be higher ranked. |
Anonymous
And it should have created a dynamic engine of economic growth like Ann Arbor rather than that backwater that is Austin. |
Anonymous
That’s true |