[DemoandDirtGuy]

I really wish that I had attended UofM rather than MSU. Honestly the education is far superior.

[german71]

Originally Posted by Jwo85

UofM is consider one of the original public ivy league schools.

I would have to agree with this and also the city it is located in has laws that differ from other colleauge towns and also movements thru not only this country but others have had serious political and other reformation laws thru time.
I would have to say also patrisom.

[BigLake]

Originally Posted by edsg25

good grief! is ol' edsg still alive?



Does "privatization" have to go whole hog or come in parts. You mentioned the Ivy League. Could Michigan, if it wanted to, become a mix of public and private parts like Cornell? Even in-state, MSU is a public university with a private law school (although that came by acquisition, not restructuring).

Didn't know that talk about Ivy membership being discussed by the university. Obviously that one would never have gotten off the ground. And wouldn't Michigan have been insane instate to leave the Big Ten to MSU?

edsg-- I appreciate your well though-out passionate posts. They're fresh air here.

I think the Ivy League talk is primarily conjecture and message board fodder. But UofM, esp., seems to be seeking new identity and the matter of going private is more real than it has been previously. Again, I'll reiterate-- I cannot substantiate or post an article. But to the spirit of your post, the private route has potential merit. Even back to the time I was there. I don't get a sense this will happen anytime soon (if ever). Interesting to posit though if these discussions move in that direction.

BTW-- I agree that all conversations and backroom discussions will be dropped once people realize that a world without UofM in the BigTen would ultimately leave MSU as the lone rep from the great state of Michigan. That would just not be right. It would almost be as horrible as having Ohio State University as the lone rep from Ohio. Wait...

[edsg25]

Originally Posted by BigLake

edsg-- I appreciate your well though-out passionate posts. They're fresh air here.

I think the Ivy League talk is primarily conjecture and message board fodder. But UofM, esp., seems to be seeking new identity and the matter of going private is more real than it has been previously. Again, I'll reiterate-- I cannot substantiate or post an article. But to the spirit of your post, the private route has potential merit. Even back to the time I was there. I don't get a sense this will happen anytime soon (if ever). Interesting to posit though if these discussions move in that direction.

BTW-- I agree that all conversations and backroom discussions will be dropped once people realize that a world without UofM in the BigTen would ultimately leave MSU as the lone rep from the great state of Michigan. That would just not be right. It would almost be as horrible as having Ohio State University as the lone rep from Ohio. Wait...

back at you, Lake. your observations are spot on. And a guy from Oak Park can't help being wright...er....right................right? Or, at the very least...hemmingwayed!

Let's also keep this in mind: nobody will ever argue the prestige of Ivy League membership. But let's not forget in the world of big time athletics, being part of the Big Ten carries a helluva lot of academic prestige to its member institutions.

Let me run down one example. The University of Iowa is a highly respected public university. I can't think of one state university from any basically agrarian state, one with no major metro areas, that has a university as highly ranked as Iowa. And in state, when it comes to pride in institution, I think the gap between Iowa and Iowa State is greater than that in many other states with two flagships.

Why? I think the Big Ten is a big part of that. I think that Iowans have always taken pride in Iowa's B10 membership, as much for academics as athletics. The Big Ten draws Iowa into the Great Lakes region where public higher education truly developed into the standard for the nation. Indeed, it wasn't UVa or UNC that were the models for the comprehensive state university, but instead a transappalachian university in the equalitarian old northwest that set the model: U-M. Iowa draws from the association with Big Ten country, so near to it in the very eastern part of the state. Indeed, it is the Big Ten that helped create the Chicago-UIowa connection which is a major part of the persona of the university.

Iowa State is a very good public university, but through much of history, it offered up the Big Eight, not the Big Ten, and Iowa's B10 membership brought prestige, recognition and the CIC.

So while U-M may be the very embodiment of the notion of outstanding Big Ten public university, it is also the beneficary of that association.

[YAZ]

Great posts, all!

The prestige comes from football though. By far, the biggest cash cow ever in the history of colleges and universities.

Amazing, eh?

I couldn't care less if my dentist was a Wolverine, Spartan, or Boilermaker.

My doctor in MI was a Buckeye; affiliated with the U-M Medical Center.

How did he get past security?

[edsg25]

Originally Posted by YAZ

Great posts, all!

The prestige comes from football though. By far, the biggest cash cow ever in the history of colleges and universities.

People don't realize the role that football has played in the academic profile of many universities, especially away from the northeast. It had a great deal to with the the visibility of universities in the early days of the sport.

Schools like Stanford and Univ of Chicago built an academic reputation with the help of the gridiron just as U-M did. Chicago and Michigan were the first great powerhouses outside the northeast. Does anyone seriously believe that a small, obscure Catholic school in rural Indiana in some Podunk place called South Bend could have risen to the apex of Catholic learning in America without its Fighting Irish?

[Dewdroplet76]

Well, I'm not a native Michigander, I'm from Los Angeles - but I went to U of M! It was one of the top universities for my major. I had the most wonderful experience there. The teachers were excellent, the campus is phenomenal, and the whole college experience was just perfect. Almost all of my friends that went there with me have gone on to very successful careers - which isn't surprising considering that most people that go there are hard working, intelligent individuals. Of course, most of the hard working usually comes after freshman year. Freshman year, most likely at most colleges, is usually spent on drinking, partying, and adapting to living away from your parents for the first time! But once you get past that point, most people settle down. I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's a top notch university, in the top 10 for so many different majors, and has a great college atmosphere - so it's going to attract people from all over the world. Maybe because of that - it doesn't feel like Michigan's school - but a school that is in Michigan. Either way, it's a wonderful university and would make any state proud!
BTW, my senior year we won the football national championship! Sometimes, our sports are excellent!!!

[67Tony]

Originally Posted by michmoldman

Its a lot of things....many which I cant answer, but one thing I did see or hear last week on the Jim Rome show, is that U of M has the best "campus life" in the country.

Jim Rome was on drugs when he said that.
U-M has no "campus life", as university itself is interspersed throughout the city.
There is no campus...

[MrPrometheus]

Originally Posted by Dewdrop93

Well, I'm not a native Michigander, I'm from Los Angeles - but I went to U of M! It was one of the top universities for my major. I had the most wonderful experience there. The teachers were excellent, the campus is phenomenal, and the whole college experience was just perfect. Almost all of my friends that went there with me have gone on to very successful careers - which isn't surprising considering that most people that go there are hard working, intelligent individuals. Of course, most of the hard working usually comes after freshman year. Freshman year, most likely at most colleges, is usually spent on drinking, partying, and adapting to living away from your parents for the first time! But once you get past that point, most people settle down. I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's a top notch university, in the top 10 for so many different majors, and has a great college atmosphere - so it's going to attract people from all over the world. Maybe because of that - it doesn't feel like Michigan's school - but a school that is in Michigan. Either way, it's a wonderful university and would make any state proud!
BTW, my senior year we won the football national championship! Sometimes, our sports are excellent!!!

It's nice that in these gloomy times for Michigan that you're able to chime in with "something" good to say ... makes me feel pretty good.

Here's an interesting link that to some degree contradicts my comments from the other day that I posted on this thread. And no doubt the good folks at U.C. Berkeley aren't too thrilled about it, because in most of these types of surveys they more often than not come out higher than U-M. And this particular survey must be especially painful because, supposedly, it's a fair ranking of institutions of higher learning from a world perspective.

World's Best Universities: Top 400 - US News and World Report

[edsg25]

Originally Posted by MrPrometheus

I
And no doubt the good folks at U.C. Berkeley aren't too thrilled about it, because in most of these types of surveys they more often than not come out higher than U-M.

What Cal (and UCLA for that matter) needs to worry about is far more serious than U-M:

a state in financial collapse with all the UC's being slashed out of excellence.

Cal will have to find a way to uphold its vaunted rankings without much of the funding it rightfully expected from the state of California.