It’s worth remembering how massively hard it would be to “turn Buffalo into UMich.” While the University of Michigan is clearly a public university – among other things, its board is largely appointed by the government, and it has always embraced its responsibility to Michigan citizens – state-sourced public money is a very small piece of its finances. It has a huge endowment, huge alumni support, huge capital in place, and of course significant federal research dollars. It takes generations to build the kind of endowment, alumni base, and physical campus. There was a time when Buffalo really did aspire to become the University of Michigan. In the mid-60s / early 70s, it had amazing faculty in a number of areas. But the level of sustained state support that would have been necessary to turbo-boost to an elite level was never politically feasible.