Talk:University of Michigan
"Harvard of the Midwest" is not a violation of NPOV in this "often called" format. But please! Now we'll have a page for "Harvard of the ..." MichaelTinkler, alumnus of Rice University, the Harvard of the Southwest.
This was on the mainpage. I got sick of it.
Dick Beldin A.B.(1961), M.P.H.(1965), Ph.D.(1967)
-trimalchio
Who calls the University of Michigan "The Harvard of the Midwest"? People from Michigan? Michigan Alumni? I certainly don't dispute that the University of Michigan is an excellent university, far better than most (but hardly all) state universities, but I've never heard it called that and I won't be the least bit surprised if someone tells me that the University of Chicago is also called that, and more aptly so, since it's a private university and seems to have more prestige, quite possibly well-justified, than does the University of Michigan. For the sake of NPOV the article should say among whom that epithet has currency. -- Mike Hardy\
U of M is not occasionally called that -it is almost exclusively called that even in preference to "Michigan" or "University of Michigan" -at least in verbal communication; perhaps not in writing. You cannot have a patriotic duty to defend a school. A search on the phrase "harvard of the midwest" shows even the school paper mentioning that the phrase is used in respect to the university. --rmhermen
To call Michigan the "Harvard of the Midwest" is stupid. Even more stupid is calling Harvard the "Michigan of the East," which is how John F. Kennedy referred to his alma mater while making a speech at Michigan. (http://www.jfklibrary.org/j101460.htm).
Nevertheless, Michigan *is* one of the top public universities in the country (USNews: undergrad - #3, behind Berkeley and UVA). Michigan also has more top-10 graduate programs than any other university in the country aside from Harvard and Berkeley.
-d
I took it for granted that the word "patriotic" would be understood as a metaphor. What word would you suggest instead? Students at UNC call Duke University "Dook" out of .... what, if not "patriotism"? Michael Hardy 01:28 Jan 14, 2003 (UTC)
Now I've changed it so that it says "loyalty" rather than "patriotism". Michael Hardy 17:34 Jan 15, 2003 (UTC)
Should we add the Michigan-Ohio rivalry in here? __earth 07:09, Apr 10, 2004 (UTC)
Someone who is better at manipulating graphics than I am should get the university seal with the lamp and "Artes Scientia Veritas" to either replace or supplement the block M. The block M is more for athletics, while the university seal is used more officially (like on the diplomas). The bit about the treaty obligations and land grant schools seems spurious. What treaty? The land grant school in Michigan is Michigan State, anyway, since Michigan was founded before the Land Grant act was passed.
- U of M was created on a Native American land grant, if not a land grant under the federal Act. There's a plaque about it near the flagpole on the Diag...I oughta go read it before I leave for the summer and clear up those first couple sentences. =D Ed Cormany 01:00, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)
- I asked to use the seal here, and here's the response I got.mnemonic 02:49, 2004 May 28 (UTC)
"I'm sorry, but we would not give permission for the seal to be used on this or any other website that is not under the direct purview of the University of Michigan.
Thank you for your inquiry.
Sincerely,
Nancy Asin"
The Supreme Court Case
"In 2003 a lawsuit involving the school's affirmative action admissions policy reached the U.S. Supreme Court. President George W. Bush took the unusual step of publicly opposing the policy before the court issued a ruling, though the eventual ruling was in its favor."
I believe this is incorrect. The court ruled that the University of Michigan's affirmative action policies (which gave points for being a member of a specific ethnic minority) was too "quota-like" and ruled it as unconstitutional. In a separate suit, however, affirmative action was uphelp.
top five?
The article says "Michigan's teaching and research staff is considered one of the top five faculties in the country." Where is this information coming from? How is it being tabulated? I would guess Michigan is one of the top five public research universities (UC Berkeley, UCLA, Michigan, Wisconsin, Virginia, UT, and possibly the University of Washington come to mind as candidates for that list). Is that what this means? It just seems like there would be a number of schools roughly at Michigan's level or higher, and this makes "top five" seem somewhat unlikely unless it's tabulated in a particular way (Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, UPenn, Brown (possibly), Columbia, Chicago, Stanford, Wisconsin, Berkeley, UCLA come to mind and I'm probably forgetting some).
- i wonder the same.
- it seems that many articles for top colleges are a bit liberal with laying on praise... some, while being informative and overall accurate, sound more like the products of fanboyism rather than impartial assessments. ✈ James C. 07:32, 2004 Aug 2 (UTC)