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<p>Interesting question. I don’t have all the stats, but I think you’re wrong about Michigan, hawkette. I do know that the current total enrollment (grad + undergrad) of 41,028 (figure from 2008) is only about 8% higher than in 1999 when it was 37,846; but the undergrad enrollment grew by only abotu 6% over that decade, from 24,493 to 26,083.</p>
<p>I found an old AP story online that said the enrollment at the Ann Arbor campus in 1987 was 49,523, or almost 20% HIGHER than today’s figure—though I don’t necessarily trust the source, which may have flipped the numbers for the University of Michigan and Michigan State as the latter has been larger for some time now. Here’s the link.</p>
<p>[Ludington</a> Daily News - Google News Archive Search](<a href=“Ludington Daily News - Google News Archive Search”>Ludington Daily News - Google News Archive Search)</p>
<p>Bottom line, I don’t think enrollment at Michigan has changed much at all since I went there back in the early 1970s.</p>
<p>Not all public universities are alike. The University of Michigan went through a painful adjustment to drastically diminished state funding about 30 years ago, the last time the auto industry was in a mess comparable to the one it faces today. Since then, state funding has represented a really tiny fraction of the University’s total revenue, and still the University has thrived and is now well ahead of the curve in making that transition. The legislature is in no position to ask the University to “do more with less,” since under Michigan’s constitution no one but the University—an autonomous arm of the state, answerable neither to the legislature nor to the executive branch— decides what the University will do and not do, including how many students it will enroll.</p>