<p>anzacday, you got Michigan's endowment per student right, but Rice's endowment per student wrong. Rice's endowment per student is $900,000, not $1.5 million. You may want to add the 2,100 graduate students to the total student body when calculating Rice's per/student endowment. It works better when you do!</p>
<p>Still, Rice's endowment is amazing to be sure. But Michigan's endowment per student is deceiving. Like any flagship state university, Michigan receives hundreds of millions of dollars in state and federal funding annually. $330 million in Michigan's case to be exact. A private university must have $20-$25 of endowment to generate each $1 a state university receives in state funding. That's because universities can only spend 4%-5% of their endowment's worth annually. In other words, a private university must have an endowment of $6.6-$8.3 billion to generate the $330 million that Michigan receives from the state annually. That's in addition to Michigan's $7.1 billion endowment. A private university would require an endowment of $14-$15.5 billion to be in Michigan's financial situation. Otherwise said, Michigan operates like a private university with an endowment per student of $340,000-$380,000. That's comparable to Cornell ($270,000 per student), Columbia ($300,000/student), Penn ($330,000), Brown ($400,000) and Chicago (430,000). And what do you make of schools like Johns Hopkins, Carnegie Mellon and Georgetown? They have endowments per student of $150,000, $100,000 and $75,000 respectively. Those universities must be lacking too I suppose?</p>
<p>And even if the state's future is uncertain, the University of Michigan's future seems unaffected. Michigan's economy and population have been steadily declining for close to 40 years. And yet, in the last 20 years, the University of Michigan's endowment has grown by 2,700%. In that same period, only 5 other universities' endowments grew by more than 1,000%, and none by more than 1,500%. Rice's endowment only grew by 500%. Besides, most companies that recruit on the Michigan campus are not from the state of Michigan. That's because Michigan has a very strong national appeal.</p>
<p>Did I hear you say that Michigan has a "chancellor". And yet you claim that you know Michigan well eh? Michigan has a president. And Lee Bolinger did not leave Michigan because of any quality issues. He turned down a couple of very enticing offers while being president of Michigan. At one point, he was considered one of the front-runners for the Harvard presidency. However, being president of Columbia, his own alma matter, was an offer he could not refuse...and they did not require a dead horse to build their case!</p>
<p>Michigan's mean SAT is not 1200, it is 1320. Obviously, that's still not as high as many of its private peers, but do keep in mind that Michigan does not report superscored SAT results. Michigan's mean ACT score is 29, compared to 30 or 31 at most elite private universities. </p>
<p>As for your statement that "hordes of nameless students rounded up into 500 seat lecture halls, grading and discussion sections the responsibility of GSAs... these are not to sought in undergraduate education." You have described what some Freshmen go through, although I am not sure there are any halls large enough to seat more than 350 or 400 students at Michigan. But then again, Freshmen at many of the country's elite universities must contend with those unfortunate conditions. Maybe not 350 or 400 students, but 150 or 200 students. But once students get past their Freshman year, classes tend to be quite small. Most intermediate and advanced level classes actually have fewer than 30 students and are taught exclusively by full time professors.</p>
<p>Finally, Michigan's campus may not be beautiful, but it is impressive and easy on the eyes. Some areas, like the Law quad, the diag and North Campus are very pretty. The arboretum is gorgeous. The football stadium and university Hospital are very impressive to say the least. And I cannot imagine what the new Business school is going to be like, but it should be amazing.</p>
<p>You should give more credit to one of America's finer universities. Denigrating Michigan does not strengthen your argument and does not reflect well on you.</p>
<p>At any rate, good luck to you at Rice. It is one of the best universities in the country. I am sure you will love it there.</p>