Michigan PTA Calling For Budget Action

Colleges & Universities A-Z University of Michigan
20

<p>I won’t even argue with the method because statistics can be easily manipulated just by the way a person carries out a calculation. My method (using the ratio between state contribution + IS tuition vs OOS tuition shows much more dramatic results. But as one would learn in statistic class, you could always pick a method that makes your point stand out so I am not going to bother with then. </p>

<p>So lets say we adopt your method:

  1. Did you totally ignore spring/summer term there? That itself could be a 10-15% swing.
  2. Did you ignore the fact that instate students are required to have their needs met 100% and a big chunk of the financial aid comes from MICHIGAN GRANT which is paid by the university from the general fund? That itself is at least a 10% swing again assuming that OOS students gets 80% needs met (this is a WAY generous number to give) based on the average financial aid per student data.
  3. Did you ignore the grad school discount for in state grad students? That’s also at least a 10% swing and probably A LOT more because a huge proportion of michigan students are grad students and the discount is about 50%.</p>

<p>These 3 factors alone would at least bring your percentage down to 50 and possibly lower (edit here because I didnt think about the grad school tuition impact at first)</p>

<p>“And this is not to mention the huge benefit of the lower tuitions. They get a huge applicant pool from Michigan, they allow themselves to be more selective,”
Really? There are 2 types of selectivity. Selectivity by number and selectivity by quality.
Case in point:
U of M : 42 % acceptance rate
Tulane: 27% acceptance rate
are you seriously going to tell me that Tulane is more selective than U of M? Because selectivity by number means nothing if the pool is saturated by unqualified candidates. And since the in state pool’s average stats are significantly lower than the out of state pool, your so called selectivity is simply selectivity by number.
What we need is selectivity by quality, which could be achieved by privatizing and attracting out of state students. Prime example of selectivity by quality: UChicago</p>

<p>“Any 7% of endowment figure is completely irrelevant and misleading.”
Why does this even have to do with endowment? The state contributes 7% to the university’s overall annual budget. For every 100 dollars the university spend in a year, the state contribute 7 dollars. I am sure that’s pretty relevant. Try to find me another state that contribute less % to the operating budget of its state flagship because I can guarantee you cant.</p>