[Ann_Arbor]

Originally Posted by tuebor

Actually, UM, MSU, and WMU are all top-tier research institutions, according to the Carnegie classification system, so we have three major universities. The Granholm administration has recognized the importance of postsecondary education in general and these institutions in particular for the future economy of Michigan, and would like to turn this "technology tri-corridor" into another Silicon Valley. See the major recommendations of the Cherry Commission: Implementation

^ fascinating idea

This would be interesting- reminds me of a more spaced out NC triangle Raleigh - Durham area). Kalamazoo, Lansing, Ann Arbor make a symmetrical triangle, for what ever that's worth, but need a technological/infrastructural upgrade. Look at the I94 corridor, in many ways the state's billboard and business, it is antiquated and dilapidated, no wonder people think this state doesn't live up to the beauty hype. High-speed rail is needed, at least a state-of-the-art highway/parkway system that could transcend some sort of triangle/corridor/crossroads- beauty and business. Where does Detroit fit in- does this new state mega-center hold Detroit's hand? Far out thinking, but this state needs a major image change, as we all know, and as much as I love Detroit, it's not needed anymore in a big city sense. In my opinion, Detroit would be no bigger than Port Huron if it were built post-auto manufacturing. Do other cities have to suffer while we feed that un-sustaining machine? Either reinvent Detroit into a city where there is a critical mass of professionals/graduates or, a invent a new contemporary Michigan known for several small and mid sized cities (e.g. North Carolina).

I hope that didn't move too far off this forum's intention, but this relates to the image, technology, general new-thinking that our state's instituions provide. Places that need to be better tapped into/integrated with.

[TheProf]

^^tuebor, are you sure you didn't mean WSU (as in Wayne State) as opposed to WMU (Western Michigan). Last I knew, Wayne was considered a major research institution along with MSU & UM and had similar state contitutional status: meaning their trustee boards are selected by State voters as opposed to being appointed by the governor. WMU is a good undergrad school, but not research oriented last I checked... And only MSU and U-M are AAU (Association of American Universities) members: the top 64 for research institutions in North America (US and Canada).

[tuebor]

Yes, I meant Wayne State, not Western. Sorry about that -- I guess I shouldn't have tried to compose a post and listen to Weekend Edition at the same time.

[TheProf]

^Gotcha...

[edsg25]

Originally Posted by TheProf

Very thoughtful, interesting thread edge25. Let me add this, too..

... a lot of people don't realize that even as an agricultural college (and MSU actually had 6 names rather than 3, starting with the cumbersome Agricultural College of the State of Michigan), the school had quite a bit of prestige. See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History...ate_University

While, yes, I know Wikipedia is hardly the Gospel, this MSU history is pretty on target (from my research) and, after all, is extensively footnoted with original sources, including written histories and info from its own website. What’s interesting, and ironic, is that while it was classified as, and called the ‘State Agricultural College’ for most of the 19th Century, many kids from the farms it largely attracted from, used the high quality academics (that mixed vocational-type ag courses with liberal arts and lots of science) as a means to escape the farm and enter the professions… Of course, another key early purpose/aspect – if not the driving aspect that lead to MSU’s founding -- was to provide applied science research in a scientific way to the farm which, theretofore, had relied on ancient, unscientific methods… The initial (and only) degree “B.S. in Agriculture” from the Lansing college (there was no separate city of East Lansing until 1907) really was a cover for a complete and rounded and State Agricultural College curriculum which helped attract and produce as strong and diverse alumni group during the 19th/early 20th Century, as diverse and prestigious (a bunch of leading scientists and authors, for instance) as some of the top liberal arts colleges of the day (to which SAC/MAC was similar in size in those olden days), and far more stronger than the average Midwest college of the time.

While most of the early land grant colleges (including Purdue, Kansas State, Maryland and others) fought against the “Michigan model” of a more mixed liberal education and stuck with the purely vocational/technical education to please farm interests by cranking out graduates who were distinctively not scholarly but geared toward strictly working on and running the farm, all of them eventually embraced liberal/general approach of SAC… it’s why MSU was then, and is now, considered the “Pioneer Land Grant College.”

Edge25, MSU may have had ag roots – it most assuredly did -- that MSU today is considered a powerful co-flagship university though, admittedly, somewhat in U-M’s shadow, was the direct result, as I see it, of building on this historically strong foundation.

thanks for the acknowledgement and your own excellent take on this. You guys here are terrific and I appreciate the number of comments I got here.

Couple things:

you've gone through the whole name change and the status as an agricultural institution for MSU. My understanding has been that for so many years (at least up to the 1950's), U-M was in a position to call a lot of the shots as to what MSU (or other in-state u's) would be.

You Michiganders can correct me, but I am under the asumption from what I have read that your state is if name the best example at least close to it of a weak centralized control of the universities and gobs and gobs of autonomy for the individual schools.

Add to this not only U-M's top dog position but that U-M has traditionally been one of the least connected, most autonomous flagships in the nation. Plainly put, Michigan has never been able to tell U-M what to do.

U-M sought the ag program and would have loved to play the role of insitiutions like UIUC, UW-Madison, etc., where one flagship exists in state and it touches all bases.

U-M's power didn't work there, but it certainly kept the "U" out of MSC for decades and was legendary for trying to keep MSU out of the Big Ten; the Spartans accessiblity to the Capitol Building obviously crushed their desires. I do remember hearing that there was a Spartan pay back a few years later where a conference vote had MSU helping to keep U-M out of Pasadena on New Years Day.

You brought up heavily ag related, land grant institutions like K-State. What I find interesting is how many of such schools:

K-State, Ok St, Ia St, Miss St, Colo St tend to be in more rural states with a stronger need to keep agriculture and related fields a larger part of the curriculum. In the heavily populated, urbanized northeast quadrant of the nation that extends from the northeast to the Middle West (north of the Mason Dixon/Ohio R and east of the Mississippi), the only states that operate with a true dual flagship system are Michigan and Indiana.

Indiana chose to give both IU and Purdue different missions. But in Michigan, MSU has acquired a strong overlap with U-M in curriculum, obviously meeting the needs of urban Michigan.....with parallels not in existence in the states like Kansas, Iowa, and Okla listed above.

Michigan is more of an example of (and I know this is a bit of a stretch): taking different routes to the same place for U-M and MSU.

Parallels there? I'd say:

UF and FSU
UA and ASU
Cal and UCLA

Those three examples come closest, IMHO, to the U-M/MSU model.

Again, I'm not the expert here; you guys are. Am I spot on or off base on the above?

[hsw]

No doubt U-IL and U-MI are excellent engineering schools, but phenomenon (as others have observed) is that brightest grads logically leave for where their career opportunities are brightest....nature of free markets...

Alums of U-IL or U-MI were founders of google, youtube, Netscape, etc...all SiliconValley-based cos....doubt these guys are ever coming back to Midwest...or leaving SiliconValley...

Many of smartest kids upon graduating HS anywhere target leading colleges, which are heavily in Northeast and CA; upon graduation, many of brightest target lucrative, intellectually challenging careers...esp tech and finance....thus, SiliconValley and Manhattan's disproportionate nos. of talented, ambitious young engineers and financiers...this cycle has been intensifying for perhaps past 20+yrs, since modern tech and finance industries have dramatically grown in power, wealth creation and size...

Leading engineering and undergraduate finance schools are impressive and important, but....Wharton is perhaps world's leading undergrad training ground for financiers, but nearly everyone leaves Phila upon graduation for NYC....and then some migrate to SF, LA and Chic after starting their career in NYC....Phila is a quick post-HS stop of many smart guys, but no one ever returns to Phila for their career...

Same dynamic exists w/Bos....most of smartest Harvard grads leave for NYC/SiliconValley upon graduation; best MIT grads head for SiliconValley....no surprise why Bos' economy, esp in tech and finance, is dwarfed by scale of SV and Manhattan....

And the value of universities is increasingly being questioned....many tech titans are college dropouts (Gates, Jobs, Ellison, etc) and many are dropouts of Stanford's CS/EE PhD pgm (Brin, Page, Bechtolsheim, Yang, Filo, etc)....and nearly none of the leading hedge fund kings (many in their 30s) has ever bothered wasting his time to get a silly MBA....a fairly irrelevant degree for the "slow kids" of finance since the mid-'90s....

[TheProf]

Originally Posted by edsg25

thanks for the acknowledgement and your own excellent take on this. You guys here are terrific and I appreciate the number of comments I got here.

Parallels there? I'd say:

UF and FSU
UA and ASU
Cal and UCLA

Those three examples come closest, IMHO, to the U-M/MSU model.

Again, I'm not the expert here; you guys are. Am I spot on or off base on the above?

Edge, I'm rather time restricted now, so I'll only address this last point. I'd say, probably, UVa vs.VaTech is probably the closest analogy in terms of prestigious, old-line flagship vs. not-as-prestigious, yet very strong in its own right land grant. But even in Va, VaTech tends to be more tech-oriented and less general than MSU, so it's a little different. In Arizona and Florida, in fact, the flagship is indeed the land-grant combined school. The so-called "lesser" school were originally: a former teacher's college (or "Normal School") and a former state-created women's liberal arts college, respectively... Again, MSU's history starting with it's 1st president, a Harvard-educated guy who impressed many of his Harvard sensibilities on the little ag school, altered MSU from the beg inning and it has flowered, over time, into something of an odd institution, at least in terms of how most land grant/2nd school's have developed... although it took until 1955 to get an official "University" tag, it has always had considerable prestige (consider its many early accomplishments, then Google with quotes around the names some of MSU’s early alums and profs and alums like WJ (or William J. Beal, Liberty Hyde Bailey, or Ray Stannard Baker, see how many hits you get (to these long dead people) and you get an idea of what I mean), esp inside Michigan, and for that reason, has always been something of a pest to U-M, which is part of the reason why the rivalry has historically been so virulent.

[Anthera]

Originally Posted by Sociologist

Interesting to note that you went to Chicago, which is most similar to UM in its academic pursuits and student makeup (of course we all know that Chitown is a math and science hot bed). I believe they both serve a separate purpose, both attracting a different type of demographic. It is true that most people don't realize that many other states do not offer such a broad range of choices when it comes to choosing a university. Sadly, as pointed out previously that many brilliant people who go through our public institutions never stay here.

UIC = University of Illinois at Chicago, much more like Wayne State than UM.

[crbcrbrgv]

I think you have to put Western Michigan in the same category as MSU. The main difference is Western is easier to get into. Oh, and MSU would probably beat Western in football with its 4th string team.

[Anthera]

Originally Posted by crbcrbrgv

I think you have to put Western Michigan in the same category as MSU. The main difference is Western is easier to get into. Oh, and MSU would probably beat Western in football with its 4th string team.

Do their graduate school programs come anywhere near MSU's? MSU has a law school, two medical schools (md & od) as well as MBA and MA programs. The lack of a law school kept MSU back in the rankings for years.

I think MSU's field hockey team could beat Western on a good day.