How much longer can U-M remain an elite institution?
Just thought I'd throw this out for discussion as I avoid getting heat stroke in my apt...
With a massive brain drain in the state of Michigan, and the US population's gradual migration south and west, is Michigan in a good position to remain one of the top public universities in the country?
We have seen M slide a spot or so every year in US News rankings, and Mary Sue is admitting record freshman classes every year to offset the decrease in state funding. How can the university avoid sliding with the entire Midwest? Should we go private or find alternative tuition structures to attract the best out-of-state students?
In 50 years, I see Texas and Florida becoming the top public universities along with Berkeley and UCLA due to population shift and job opportunities, unless Michigan is able to invest in something besides autos.
Autos are a really tough industry to make money consistently.
I do agree that Michigan's future should be in alternative energy. There's a lot of engineering brainpower, strong universities, and an industrial base that would love to be first in figuring out a viable alternative fuel. Sometimes I feel like the state is one great entrepreneur away from being an economic powerhouse again.
"Sometimes I feel like the state is one great entrepreneur away from being an economic powerhouse again."
Please be! I don't want to move away :(
You would be correct
UT and Texas A&M share a 15 billion dollar endowment from the state, most of which is tied up in oil. I'm not really sure how their situation works. UC Berkley's is about half ours.
With seven other academic universities and six health institutions. If it works anything like the Big "Twelve," UT gets by far the biggest slice. But Michigan's $6B endowment is the largest one supporting a public university, and the seventh largest overall, public or private.
I see the leaders of alternative energy vehicles shifting to Silicon Valley, where Tesla has already put a foot in the ground. GM's Volt is a great start, but do you have faith they can keep it up?
One car company (one yet to turn a profit) sets up in the southwest, and you deem that to be the end of Detroit? May I suggest you re-evaluate your long range planning.
I just don't have faith in the Detroit car companies to adequately adapt, as they have grown to do business in one way for 100 years. Not saying that Tesla alone producing a single model spells their end, but more nimble companies might be able to seize the electric opportunity.
I just don't have faith in the Detroit car companies to adequately adapt, as they have grown to do business in one way for 100 years.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/23/AR2010072305299.html
Too late. Ford HAS adapted. GM is majorly improving too.
companies don't last 100 years without adapting.
I don't think you want to base what would become a large manufacturing company in an area as expensive as Silicon Valley. Tesla Roadsters are pretty sweet in person, but they aren't anywhere near a viable alternative fuel car for everyday use.
Michigan has the infrastructure, cost of living, and a better tax base than Silicon Valley for something like that. I'd really be concerned about the South taking over. Cost of living is still low there and the laws are decidedly anti-union (not politicking here).
Tesla is a relatively small start-up who has never turned a profit (although they did recently ink a deal with Toyota). It will be a long time, if ever, before they become a threat to the GMs of the world, just in terms of volume.
And anyway, without straying too much into politics, California has a regulatory/tax environment that's pretty poisonous to new business development, plus it's just bloody expensive to operate there even without the taxes. If Tesla does hit it big, it seems unlikely that the majority of their manufacturing will stay in California. I just don't see CA becoming a real base of the manufacturing sector.
The real in-country threat to Detroit manufacturing is the many plants being built in the South by foreign automakers. With no UAW to deal with, they can undercut Detroit manufacturing.
How much longer will the world exist?
5 Days, 6 hours and 52 minutes.
Can you define "Monts?"
only with keyboard gnomes involved.
we break in the new dtadium!
At just over a billion years, as the sun becomes a red giant, the extra energy output will evaporate the oceans.
Plenty of time for the Space Emperor to establish The University of Michigan - Space.
Too.
"The Final Wrath of the Space Emperor"? Someone leaked that? Heads will roll!
Is the University of Michigan - Space on another planet or does it just exist on some massive starship that travels the galaxy?
Or on a space station. "Space" to me means "not on a planet."
But perhaps there will be The University of New Michigan.
that when you have some of the best programs in the country, like our law school which is the third best law school in the country, you don't slide. Michigan is one of the top academic institutions and it won't change.
Hey man, I wish you were right- I went to M Law, but we aren't third. We were in 1986, when USNWP came out with their first law school rankings, but now our ranking is always in the 7-10 range. At least every ranking I've ever seen in the past 10 years or so.
Michigan's 35% oos student population was purposefull by the university, ie oos equals alot more tuition.... ie 35% pay more in tuition then the 65% do that are instate. And likely this amount could grow to 40%....but MSC has admitted it is critical to keep the majority of students instate.
Endowment fund, Texas endowment is part of the Texas SYSTEM, ie horns, aggies, raiders, baylor and many smaller satellite schools.....But make no mistake horns and aggies control majority of the money by far.
Michigan's is by far the largest of any public school and is self funded unlike texas, Harvard's is by far the largest of any in the world, 36 billion at one point.
Endowment fund, Texas endowment is part of the Texas SYSTEM, ie horns, aggies, raiders, baylor and many smaller satellite schools.....But make no mistake horns and aggies control majority of the money by far.
Quibbling at this point, but UT and TAMU share AN endowment as the two tier one, public schools. UT then shares their portion with the UT system, which includes UTSA, UTEP, and about a dozen other smaller campuses. The Austin campus gets a VAST majority of that slice and divvies off portions of it to the smaller institutes. TAMU doesn't get half, but they get something on par with UT-Austin. But that is not their only endowment. They have their own system endowments that add to the Permanent University Fund (PUF).
Texas Tech has it's own system (TT, TT Health Campuses, and Angelo State) and endowment, as do several of the other smaller public schools. They're hoping to get their hands on PUF endowment money in the next few years with their push to become a Tier One rated institution.
And obviously Baylor's endowment isn't public as a private institution.
Again, just quibbles.
How does Texas Southwestern figure in to the UT endowment being their medical center and all?
Southwestern is a private college, so I assume they're on their own money. Unless you mean Texas State-San Marcos, formerly Soutwest Texas State. TSU-SM has it's own endowment to my knowledge. I don't think there is a "Texas State System" or endowment, but I'm not entirely sure either.
Really? I was under the impression that the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas was basically the University of Texas's medical school. I'm pretty sure it's public, though admittedly I've never been there. If they are indeed part of the UT system, I figure they'd get quite a slice of the pie given that hospitals and research centers usually draw lots of endowment money.
Nevermind, I read that as Southwestern (TX), as in the private school in Georgetown. UT-Southwestern is part of the UT system and does get some of the PUF. I don't know what percentage they get, but they undoubtably get a slice of the pie.
Damn schools all sounding the same. UT-Southwestern, Southwestern, Southwestern State at San Marcos. Apologies.
Michigan might be sliding a bit with the undergrad rankings because its putting more emphasis on grad school (soon to be a requirement for a good job). I believe Michigan (the state) has the highest per capita number of science, engineering, research jobs of any state in the country. And that trend has gone up in the last 10 years. With the increase in that job sector I see Michigan on the rise as an institution. Those undergrad rankings are dumb anyway. If they meant anything obviously UM would be in the top ten.
We have a lot of something everyone needs: WATER.
No, it is not an unlimited resource! And the Midwest has lots of it. The South on the other hand... Well, once water becomes really scarce for them, they will move back to the Midwest.
Yeah, but once all the glacier ice melts, we'll have the advantage in water. We'll be drowning in it.
the last data point for ontario was an increase, and yet they're projecting a huge decline. Furthermore, It's interesting to note that their huge decline ALL takes place after now. What, exactly, do they expect to cause it?
This year, for the first time in decades, Lake Erie froze solid. It also is suddenly deeper again, and the great lakes have consistently shown that the only thing consistent about them is that their depths are completely incosistent and change for no reason. So a graph that shows a huge, perpetuated drop off beginning in 2013 after thousands of years of consistently inconsistent levels leaves me agape.
I don't profess to understand the computer modeling they used or limnology at all, but the fact that it's been decades since Lake Erie froze solid speaks more to the overall issues of climate change than the chart.
How can you say that when there is not one variable that has been discovered to have high correlation to Lake levels?
This is the major crux I have with many climate change simulations. Researchers are attempting to model and simulate future behavior of a complex system that has been shown to be far from linear and most likely stochastic in nature.
According to Nobel Laureate Richard E. Smalley water is the number 2 problem facing humanity in the next 50 years. I understand a lot is already going into water and energy (energy is the number one problem on his list) but even more should/could be done.
Top 10 Problems Facing Humanity in the next 50 years
Water, IME, will really help bring Michigan back because we have so much of such a scarce thing (which would be of the fresh variation). Just as wind energy is currently giving a boost to many of the plain states, water will be a huge boost for the great lakes states.
Also, southerners are stupid rednecks.
/semi-s
I think one of the big reasons we're slipping in undergrad rankings is because our acceptance rate is so high compared to others ranked around us. The common app should lower that.
The University of Michigan isn't what it is because of undergraduate education. Furthermore and importantly, there's effectively zero basis to the notion that its graduate and professional schools are "falling off", especially in light of the university hiring at a record pace for elite faculty during this economic recession (as its competitors like UPenn and Harvard have publicly acknowledged a slowing of their hiring paces).
I'm far from confident that the undergraduate prowess of the university will fall off, but--even *if* it does--it will affect the university's "elite" status to a barely nonzero degree. The med school, law school, engineering school, public health school, social work school, public policy school, graduate programs in biomedical research, etcetera, etcetera will--as far as anyone can currently tell--always be among the nation's elitest (top 10s/top 20s).
Pfizer Campus
A university's standing is built on generations of performance. It's extremely hard to go from marginal to good or from good to marginal. Programs remain strong and as long as the applicant pool has decent scores (and that's still the case), the university's standing will remain. The school really does have national visibility as everyone spreads out to different areas of the country.
The identity of the school, however, will probably change. I see UM becoming more like Duke given the need for tuition. Duke has a southern identity but a lot of students are from the Northeast. UM has a very strong presence in the Northeast because the Jewish population went to UM back when the Ivies discriminated. You'd be surprised to see how strong that tradition is, as it continues for generations. I also think UM has done a good job attracting Asian-Americans and students from Asia.
As for privitization, there have been a few articles out raising that possibility (I think one was on annarbor.com and the other was Time magazine). I would like to know exactly how much the university actually gets from the state because it seems really low now. We might end up being like Cornell. NY State has "statutory colleges," which are state funded departments within a larger private university. The most visibile is the Industrial and Labor Relations School at Cornell. I can certainly see Michigan establishing statutory schools in relevant fields (mechanical engineering), while leaving the rest of the school (particularily law, business, liberal arts) as private.
Lately, about $300 million a year in direct appropriations. That's a small proportion of our overall budget, but not so small it would be easy to do without.
We get some money in capital outlay, but that varies from year to year. I've never quite understood that side of it-- how we could convert the state's partial investment in our facilities.
1) The University of Michigan is a very, very good university academically when it comes to undergraduate education. However, it really separates itself when it comes to GRADUATE programs, where it competes with Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley, etc. Graduate students come from everywhere and will continue to do so.
2) The state of Michigan has hit rock-bottom. It will only get better, in my opinion, in the next decade, so as far as losing population and the economy and everything, it looks like we should be fine.
Access to heavy shipping in Michigan:
http://www.worldportsource.com/ports/USA_MI.php
21 Major ports in Michigan. The only southern state that can even come close (with any industrial base) is Texas with 20, though some of those are smaller river ports without as much access.
You CANNOT build things for the world economy if you can't ship them easily.