1922 Encyclopædia Britannica/Michigan, University of
MICHIGAN, UNIVERSITY OF (see 18.378), was the first university established by an American state to become conspicuously successful. The promise of its earlier period continued in recent years. The total roll of the faculty increased from 350 in 1907-8 to 616 in 1919-20, while the number of students grew from 5,013 to 9,401 in the same period (5,007 in the college of Literature, Science and the Arts, 2,038 in the college of Engineering and Architecture, 394 in the Medical School, 382 in the Law School, 99 in the college of Pharmacy, 42 in the Homoeopathic Medical School, 350 in the college of Dental Surgery, 340 in the Graduate School, 1,961 in the Summer Session and 222 in the two training schools for nurses). On Jan. 1 1921 there were over 30,000 living graduates. The Medical School, Law School and Homoeopathic Medical School demand two years of college work before admitting students.
Among the buildings erected between 1910 and 1920 were the Hill Auditorium (1913) seating 5,000 persons, with remarkably good acoustic properties; the Natural Science Building (1916); the new University Library (1919) containing approximately 400,000 volumes, with room for over 1,000,000 volumes; the Michigan Union (1919), a student clubhouse costing $1,250,000, the gift of
some 14,000 alumni. A new university hospital was to be completed in 1922 with accommodation for 600 patients, affording proper facilities for the teaching of medicine, and the first hospital controlled exclusively for the benefit of the people of the state. Four dormitories for women students were also erected during this period.
The income of the university in 1919-20 was $3,802,164. Of this amount $1,687,500 was derived from the state through the tax of three-eighths of a mill on every dollar of taxable property, $38,428 from the state lands originally granted by the Government for the support of the university, $682,445 from tuition, student fees, etc., and $659,250 from special appropriations and savings for the erection of buildings.
Over 12,000 graduates and students of the university were enlisted in the U.S. forces during the World War, of whom 231 lost their lives. This number included 2,747 students who were enrolled in the collegiate section of the Students' Army Training Corps during the fall of 1918. Pres. James Burrill Angell, upon his resignation in 1909, was succeeded by Harry Burns Hutchins, dean of the Law School, as acting president (1909-10) and president (1910-20). Pres. Hutchins resigned in 1920 and was succeeded by Marion Leroy Burton, who had been president of Smith College (1910-7) and of the university of Minnesota (1917-20).
See A Memorial of the Seventy-fifth Anniversary of the Founding of the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, 1915); also Wilfred Shaw, The University of Michigan (New York, 1920) and A. L. Cross, “The University of Michigan and the Training of her Students for the War,” Michigan History Magazine (Lansing, Jan. 1920).
- (W. B. S.)