Historically – founding days until post World War II – Michigan was always exceptionally strong in the humanities, and very strong in the sciences…a slight edge being given to humanities. Indeed, while Hopkins claims to be the first research university, 20 years before Hopkins was founded, Michigan’s president returned from a trip to Europe and began organizing the curriculum around the sciences and around research. This approach to the curriculum gained new energy post World War II. When MIT needed to crank up the pace, they hired Jerome Weisner, a Michigan Ph.D., and possibly the most important figure to take MIT deeper into the century using the ocean of research money garnered from defense work in the post-Sputnik world. MIT went back to the well some years later and hired Charles Vest, another Michigan Ph.D. Vest solidified the campus’s funding and created new opportunities for women. Thus 2 out of the last 4 MIT presidents were educated at Michigan.
During the same period, Michigan was not idle. Circa 1950 or so (would have to check the date) Michigan began building an entirely new campus on the property (840 acres or so, or roughly the same size as New York’s central park) which would be named North Campus. Originally, this campus was purpose built for engineering. The footage under roof probably differs, but the land mass is probably 6 times the size of MIT and like MIT, the rankings are in the low single digits for almost every program. Since the founding of that campus, other activities have been mixed in to create convenience for students on that campus.
In the recent past – roughly since the turn of this century – Michigan has reinvigorated its approach to science, this time the life sciences. Michigan has poured over 1,000,000 square feet of buildings on central campus to make space for the sciences which are still quite hard core, but somehow associated with the humanities rather than the ultra hard core work done on North campus. Michigan continues to up the ante with a huge new biology building, and purchased roughly 1,400,000 sqft of lab space from Pfizer. So, while Harvard is too impoverished to get their Alston campus off of the ground, and continues to be a hedge fund with a fine university attached, Michigan has built one entirely new campus, renovated its central campus and continues to build out the Pfizer property.
Thus, as altmusicman suggests, Michigan has been a peer and a destination for kids who want to study STEM. Michigan doesn’t seem to be slacking off and continues to run the 2nd largest university research portfolio in the world. While contracting economics nationally may threaten that budget, Michigan appears to be well positioned entering this century and entering the beginning of its third century.
Beyond the physical facilities, Michigan students can boast an interquartile range – the middle 50% – which is almost indistinguishable from Brown, Cornell and Penn.
Michigan’s scholarship may be seen in faculty awards, patents, and citations which rank that faculty in the top 10 (more likely top 5 in aggregate) in the country, if not the world.
Between bleeding-edge facilities, strength of students, strength of faculty and the fastest rising endowment in the country over the last 25 years, Michigan has it all and offers it all to students savvy enough to come to Ann Arbor.
Go Blue!