<p>Munger gives largest gift in U. Mich. history</p>
<p>Read more: Munger</a> gives largest gift in U. Mich. history - SFGate</p>
<p>That is awesome. Only two months ago, Michigan received a $50 million gift from Zell’s wife for Michigan’s graduate Creative Writing program. Graduate programs and students are getting a serious boost! And I like the fact that the donations are not aimed at well funded programs, but rather, at areas that could use the funding.</p>
<p>Great news! Now it’s time for Larry Page to make his presence known!</p>
<p>I can just picture it; “The Larry Page College of Engineering”. $500 million ought to do it! ;)</p>
<p>Very cool. Does anyone know where they’re planning to put the building?</p>
<p>Here is the Michigan Daily article that details the area they plan to build upon. The addresses are mid-way through the article.</p>
<p>[University</a> to build new graduate housing complex on Central Campus funded by largest donation in history - The Michigan Daily](<a href=“http://michigandaily.com/news/university-build-new-graduate-housing-complex-central-campus]University”>University to build graduate housing complex on Central Campus funded by largest donation in history)</p>
<p>Sue Coleman has just announced that she is retiring after next year and she has been very instrumental in fundraising and modernizing the campus. If only someone would give a huge donation to lower out of state tuition!</p>
<p>Oh, no! What’s going to happen to Krazy Jim’s Blimpy Burger?</p>
<p>It appears the new graduate dorm complex will be built on the site where Blimpy Burger currently sits.</p>
<p>Looks like this is why Michigan made such a high offer to buy out the Blimpy Burger building this year.</p>
<p>Blimpy has to find a new home. That is old news.</p>
<p>Man. I gotta go there once. Everyone says it’s so good.</p>
<p>I just really hate waiting in line though.</p>
<p>I commend Munger for such a generous gift to his alma mater. It really shows how much alumni love the University of Michigan.</p>
<p>I question though whether a graduate dorm complex is really a great use for $170 million (not to mention the cost of acquiring the land). </p>
<p>From the Michigan Daily:
“Regent Andrea Fischer Newman (RAnn Arbor) echoed Coleman, saying Michigan will be the only university to have a residential hall option for graduate students.”</p>
<p>There are two ways to interpret the above statement. Michigan will have a one of a kind dorm that will attract the brightest students around for generations to come. Or, every other university has decided there isn’t demand from graduate students to all be housed in the same building. In fact, graduate students might actually prefer living outside dorms where there is more quiet, less partying, and cheaper housing. </p>
<p>I was a graduate student once and I would have never considered an on-campus dorm even if one was offered unless it was ridiculously cheap. </p>
<p>Is the University spending for the sake of spending (and maybe the U.S. News) but not appreciably improving anything of substance?</p>
<p>^Well Munger earmarked his donation for this purpose so it’s not like the University really had a choice.</p>
<p>Also, his reasoning makes perfect sense in my opinion. He’s right that many times our greatest inspirations come across disciplines. And it’s this kind of thinking that will enable us to solve our most pressing problems. If he’s passionate about enabling cross disciplinary discussion, and if he has the money to give, then so be it. He’s doing a great service to UM.</p>
<p>Well many grad students also have started families and/or haven’t lived in a dorm in years, so i’m not sure this will have the expected demand.</p>
<p>If the University wishes to build such a structure, there is obviously demand for graduate dorms…and more importantly, vision to make this dorm a very appealing option. Having very bright graduate students in several different disciplines certainly living together could have great benefits and yield great results. Perhaps the dorm will have family accommodation. Currently, the only dorms that can accommodate families are the Northwood dorms. Having a living option on Central Campus is perhaps needed. I do not think finding 600 graduate students willing to live in such a dorm is going to be challenging at all. Michigan has close to 3,000 MD, MBA and JD students alone. Dentistry, Pharmacy, Education, Social Work, Public Policy and Nursing enroll an additional 2,000 graduate students. We’re already at 5,000 graduate students who study in Central Campus, and that does not include LSA graduate students. I don’t think it is unreasonable to anticipate that 10% of those Central Campus graduate students will want to live in a campus dorm…especially if that dorm is filled with fellow graduate students and is well put together (nice study areas, gym, cafeteria etc…). With a $185 million budget, I am certain it will be magnificent.</p>
<p>I’m pretty sure the University wouldn’t be sinking this kind of money into such a facility unless they were quite certain, based on careful market research, that there will be demand for it. As my D2 pointed out, a non-trivial number of grad students are coming from foreign countries. For them it’s got to be a daunting task to figure out the Ann Arbor housing market and to find roommates–the only way to make private housing affordable–without ever having set foot in the U.S., much less Ann Arbor. I expect foreign grad students alone will be enough to gobble up most of the relatively small number of places at this facility.</p>
<p>It’s also just flatly not the case that Michigan will be an outlier in providing residence hall housing for graduate students. Michigan already houses some law students in the Law Quad, but Harvard and Yale Law Schools also have similar facilities. Harvard’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) has a 411-room graduate residence hall for first-year grad students, designed for singles (no family units), which I believe fills up every year. They could probably get a lot of second-year-and-beyond grad students to take those spaces if needed, but there’s apparently enough demand among first-year grad students that they fill most of it with first-years. </p>
<p>[Eligibility</a> for GSAS Housing - The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences](<a href=“http://www.gsas.harvard.edu/current_students/eligibility_for_housing_in_the_gsas_residence_halls.php]Eligibility”>http://www.gsas.harvard.edu/current_students/eligibility_for_housing_in_the_gsas_residence_halls.php)</p>
<p>Yale also has long had residence hall-style graduate student housing:</p>
<p>[All</a> Buildings (Apartments and Dormitories) | Yale Graduate Housing](<a href=“Welcome | Yale Housing”>Welcome | Yale Housing)</p>
<p>And Princeton has long had a graduate student residence hall known as the Graduate College (and known to undergrads a the Goon Castle):</p>
<p>[Graduate</a> College/Annex Residential Living Policies Guide](<a href=“http://www.princeton.edu/us/housing/graduate_info/graduate-collegeannex-res/]Graduate”>http://www.princeton.edu/us/housing/graduate_info/graduate-collegeannex-res/)</p>
<p>As far as I know, none of these schools has ever had difficulty filling up these graduate residence facilities.</p>
<p>What’s innovative about the Michigan plan is not residence hall housing for grad students, but rather the configuration, with single-occupancy units with private bathrooms conjoined with communal cooking, dining, and living space. As a former grad student, that strikes me as singularly appealing: you’re not just cramped into a dorm room like an undergrad, you’re not relegated to eating dining hall food, you have freedom to prepare your own meals or heat up last night’s leftovers as you please, but the configuration also encourages and practically forces interaction with other grad students, many or most of whom will be from other disciplines. I actually think the concept is quite brilliant, but we’ll see how it works out in practice.</p>
<p>I think the best example of this concept is the graduate dorm at Stanford funded by Munger which opened in 2009. The only difference is the UM version will be even better.</p>
<p>well if it doesn’t get filled with grad students they certainly won’t leave it empty!</p>
<p>Right Shanghai. In fact I wish this were for undergrads and they converted part of Baits for Grads.</p>