<p>Brosen14, Michigan State is not in the same league academically as University of Michigan. MSU is a tier two university.</p>
<p><a href=“http://news.msu.edu/story/5635/[/url]”>http://news.msu.edu/story/5635/</a></p>
<p>You would then have a situation where the only way a talented poor student in michigan might attend a tier 1 research institution is by scholarship. Even with scholarship, as many OOS students learned this year at U of M, it is still virtually impossible for those with limited means to rationalize the debt-load of U of M OOS or any private…OOS students were complaining this year after U of M gave them $20k grant in some cases, plus self help such as sub. loans and work study, because they were STILL gapped beyond their capacity to borrow. </p>
<p>All I can say is I wake up thankful every day that U of M has been accessible to my son. And were the school to privatize, I am not certain it would have been – at least, not at the level of merit scholarship he received instate.</p>
<p>Alex,</p>
<p>I believe the 1983 rankings were entirely peer assessment score.</p>
<p>Compare the 1983 rankings to the 2008 peer assessment score ratings:</p>
<p>1983:
Stanford
Harvard
Yale
Princeton
Berkeley
Chicago
Michigan
Cornell, Illinois
MIT, Dartmouth
Caltech
Carnegie Mellon, Wisconsin</p>
<p>2008 Peer Assessment:
Harvard, Stanford, MIT
Princeton, Yale
Berkeley
Chicago, Caltech
Columbia, Cornell, Penn, Johns Hopkins
Duke, Michigan
Dartmouth, Brown, Virginia, Northwestern</p>
<p>(Illinois and Wisconsin are not far behind)</p>
<p>Michigan’s standing hasn’t changed…others may have joined the academic club, but it’s still a member.</p>
<p>I would guess that many, many people would not attend Michigan if it were a private school. I would probably be one of them.</p>
<p>I always read here that if Michigan were private, it would fill classes with more top-notch students. I think that’s a load of crap. Thinking of how school administration behaved in the past, they would just overemphasize “diversity” and test score averages, etc. wouldn’t change very much.</p>
<p>Actually, becoming a private institution would bring more top notch students to Michigan. Because the university no longer would have to accept a certain amount of in-state applicants to make the tax-payers happy. This means more qualified out-of-state students and international students. The quality of the student body will be boosted immensely.</p>
<p>Oh, I believe that more top-notch students would come. But I also believe that the administration would bring in quite a few underqualified URM students.</p>
<p>dsmo, becoming public in of itself will not improve the quality of the student body. Personally, I don’t want the student body to improve. I like it the way it is. I just want a smaller student body so that not as many students have to share existing resources. Rather than 6,000 freshman and 26,000 undergrads, I would like to see 3,800 freshmen and 16,000 undergrads. Of course, the 2,000 fewer freshmen and 10,000 fewer undergrads would mostly be made up of weaker students who would not be admitted as a result of smaller freshmen classes and smaller transfer classes. So Michigan will not attract more top-notch students (and we don’t need to because we already attract thousands of extremely talented Freshmen and Transfer students each year), but we will not accept as many underqualified applicants either. </p>
<p>As it stands, wit 26,000 undergrads, Michigan is just too large to operate optimally. The results are clear. Only 45% of our classes have 20 or fewer students and almost 20% of our classes have more than 50 students. At most of our peers, 60%-75% of their classes have 20 or fewer students and only 15%-15% of their classes have more than 50 students. That includes Cal, Cornell and Johns Hopkins, which only 5 years ago had class size statistics identical to our own. Perhaps Michigan isn’t sufficiently organized and should/could make better use of its existing resources. If that’s the case,perhaps we don’t even have to admit fewer students.</p>
<p>There are unqualified URM students at every university. But their numbers aren’t that significant compared to the unqualified in-state students who get accepted to the University of Michigan. So the change towards privatization, which will allow the composition of the student body to become more out-of-state/international oriented, will drastically improve the quality of Michigan.</p>
<p>
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<p>This is the kind of attitude that used to **** me off about some instate kids.</p>
<p>kb, that is a common point of view among in-state students everywhere. Somehow, they take their state’s flagship institution for granted. Of course, in most cases, that feeling is partly justified, particularly for top students. In the case of residents of a handful of states such as California, Illinois, Michigan, North Carolina, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin, those sentiments are unjustified. Residents of those states are truly ungrateful.</p>
<p>I read through most of this thread. From the view of a graduate student, this talk of ranking decline makes no real sense. I always have thought you take the rankings with a grain of salt, but in Michigan’s defense it continues to do very well in many graduate programs…medicine, law, most engineering disciplines, and even social work and many others. USnews ranks it as one of the top 12 or 13 national universities in the World’s best colleges and Universities catagory, a fraction of a point under Stanford.</p>
<p>Maybe there is some problem with the undergrad program that I don’t understand, however , as somebody pointed out earlier, its peer assesment ranking has not really changed in years for the undergraduate program. The point is I just don’t see how it being a public university is hurting anything in terms of rankings.</p>
<p>Also, If you read the newspapers, Michigan is often singled out for weathering the storm better than the vast majority of Universities in the nation. Its budgets are largely intact. In many of the engineering departments, Michigan is hiring faculty like crazy, when universities like stanford have been on a hiring freeze for a few years. Again, I don’t see how being public is hurting anything.</p>
<p>I understand Michigan does not take much money from the state…10% give or take. I will say that the state of Michigan did build the University up over almost 200 years. This has got to be worth something.</p>
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<p>Alex, now you know I love you dearly, but UCBChemGrad is right on this one! </p>
<p>Back when U-M was so highly rated, the rating was 100% based on peer assessment. Michigan “dropped” not because of a decline in quality, but because they added things to the formula.</p>
<p>To be comparable, you’d have to look at U-M on pure peer assessment today. I can’t remember exactly where we lie, but we haven’t “dropped” that far. We’re not #7, but we’re up there.</p>
<p>Hoedown, I love you too kiddo! 
I agree with UCB and you. I said as much in post #20. Academe and corporate America still think very highly of Michigan. But if Michigan continues to drop in the overall rankings, it could take a hit in the eyes of academe and corporate recruiters.</p>
<p>^ If too many of the top schools in USNWR ranking are private (currently the top 20 rated schools are private), then USNWR will have a deeper problem. It will have to reassess its methodology to create a more balanced list, or it’ll perpetuate the image that top public universities can’t compete with top privates. </p>
<p>I think top publics have trouble competing with the top 5 richest, most prestigious privates…but USNWR ranking is beginning to imply that publics can’t compete with the top 20 privates…that’s clearly not the case. If it gets worse, there will be louder and louder outcry against these rankings.</p>
<p>I agree UCB, especially with the current economic supercrisis, public universities will emerge in a relatively better position. For one thing, in recent years, private universities have grown increasingly dependent on their endowments whereas public universities, as a result of declining annual contribution from their own states, have found ways to work smarter and cut costs. Furthermore, many families who were willing to spend extra bucks on private universities will now turn to their home state publics as a financially sounder option.</p>
<p>A ranking that does not have Cal ranked in the top 10, Michigan in the top 15, UVa and UCLA in the top 20 and UIUC, UNC, UT-Austin and Wisconsin in the top 30 does isn’t reliable.</p>
<p>USNWR could try to include some value measure. For example, take into account average cost of attendance (out of pocket cost) versus how many top rated programs a college offers…or something like that.</p>
<p>Top privates do provide more mentoring and handholding to their undergrads - and some people feel the additional cost is worth this benefit. If publics continue to increase tuition to the level of top privates but do not increase student services (or reduce the level of demand by reducing enrollment), then that’s where the value of public education begins to suffer - and publics would fall from the rankings.</p>
<p>If the USNWR got rid of the alumni giving rate and properly audited and calibrated statistics, state schools would improve significantly in the overall rankings.</p>
<p>^^^^^So start a thread like this in the general section. Watch all the the private lover bluebloods go ballistic.</p>
<p>Perhaps it’s time we get this thread on the front page of CC (“Featured Discussions”)? Let’s see what outside observers i.e. those not associated with UM or the state have to say.</p>
<p>It is not time yet. We are just speculating at the moment. We will know more of the impact of the meltdown in the next 6-9 months. Patience…it is always wise to launch an offensive when you have the advantage!</p>