UM Proud to Remain Public

August 20, 2010

ANN ARBOR — When Mary Sue Coleman became president of the University of Michigan eight years ago this month, auto sales were booming and John Engler was still governor.

Economically and otherwise, it was a different world. True, there was some mild worry because state unemployment had edged up to 5.7 percent, but things were still generally good.

Politically, a nation whose September 11 bruises were still fresh was still rallying around President George W. Bush.

And nobody, outside of an inner-city Illinois district, had ever heard of a state senator named Barack Hussein Obama.

Eight years later, the state and the world are different. For the University of Michigan, the state’s oldest, largest and richest public institution, life these days is all about financial challenges.

“It really isn’t very sexy to answer ‘money’ when people ask what keeps you awake at night — but it does keep me awake at night!” said President Coleman, a 66-year-old biochemist by training who, these days, has to often sound like an economist.

“We’re in a very good financial situation,” (compared to many other schools) she said, but the U of M, which has 58,000 students on three campuses, is feeling the pinch.

“We work hard at controlling our costs,” she said, noting that her office was a bit warm. “I don’t turn down the air conditioning in the summer — that’ll give you a notion of what we are doing!”

Coleman has now been at Michigan for eight years, just about as long as the average American university president lasts. Since she arrived, General Motors and Chrysler have gone through bankruptcy, and the men who led Michigan’s other major universities in 2002 have long since departed.

These days, Michigan’s leaders dream of getting the jobless rate back to where it was when she arrived. (The July figure: 13.1 percent; down a fraction from the month before.)

Affirmative action, which Michigan’s oldest university had proudly used as a recruiting tool, has been outlawed by the voters, but embryonic stem cell research has been approved.

I recently talked with her at length for a forthcoming story for Michigan Alumnus, the alumni magazine. The school kindly consented to allow me to share some of her comments that might be of wider interest.

Looked at one way, Coleman, who had previously headed the University of Iowa, is essentially the CEO of a business whose bottom line is $5 billion a year — and which is ranked by U.S. News and World Report as the 29th best university in the nation.

There have even been suggestions that the U of M cease being a public university, an idea its leader quickly dismisses.

“I am very proud of being a public university. This state has a huge investment in this university it has made over almost two centuries now, and that’s a legacy of which I am very proud.”

Yet she’s aware that the school needs to keep changing with the times. “You know, every year our educational experience has to be better than the last year was. And that means recruiting the best faculty and retaining people, because it’s a war out there for talent!”

That takes money. Despite the times, Coleman has steered the U of M into some major strategic investments. Last year, it spent $108 million to buy the Pfizer corporation’s now-abandoned 30-acre, 174 building site in north Ann Arbor, two million square feet of office and laboratory space. The university hopes to expand its research activities and perhaps start new commercial partnerships.

And this summer, the U of M completed a three-year, $226-million renovation of Michigan Stadium that included new suites, outdoor club seats and a state-of-the-art new press box, facilities they hope will help fans forget the recent scandal, when football officials were cited by the National Collegiate Athletic Association for exceeding the hours college players could spend practicing.

Those investments are expected to pay for themselves. The school is also aggressively expanding its ties with China, particularly Shanghai Jiao Tong University, an engineering center.

And, in a move that is sure to be controversial, the school is thinking about increasing its percentage of out-of-state students, now more than a third of the total. Non-resident students pay vastly higher tuition rates, “part of the temptation.”

“The high school population [in Michigan] is going down,” Coleman said, “and one of the things we can do that actually helps other state institutions is to edge up our out-of-state enrollment.” While stressing that no decision has yet been made, her theory is that this would mean that other state universities would then get better in-state students.

However, that would be bound to prove hotly controversial with legislators, as well as with thousands of in-state students who are denied admission to the U of M every year.

Despite all the trials, Mary Sue Coleman still loves her job. She has two years remaining on her contract, which pays her $760,196 a year.

“I’m having the time of my life. This is an endlessly exciting place, and I couldn’t go anyplace else. It would be a disappointment!”

Veteran journalist and national Emmy Award winner Jack Lessenberry teaches at Wayne State University, serves as Michigan Radio’s senior political analyst and writes regularly for several publications. He also serves as The Toledo Blade’s writing coach and ombudsman and is host of the weekly television show Deadline Now on WGTE-TV in Toledo.