Is this the new student activism?

I often hear a wistful regret expressed that students have lost their passion; that the student activism of the late 1960s and early 1970s has been lost and will not come again.  I don't agree.

In 1968 UM President Robben Fleming and future Weather Underground founder Bill Ayers were communicating with each other through bull horns on the lawn outside the president’s house on South University avenue in Ann Arbor.  While Fleming was against the war in Vietnam and generally tolerant of student protests, Ayers still saw him as “the establishment.”  Fleming writes in his autobiography of addressing crowds of protesters so large they shut down streets, of draft cards and flags burning in his yard, and confederate flags appearing in his windows.  When the Chicago Seven were convicted, a protest march of some 2000 appeared in Ann Arbor.

On the day of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s funeral, a group of students occupied the University of Michigan’s administration building, baring the doors against entry.  BAM, the Black Action Movement formed in Ann Arbor, and in 1970 organized a general student strike.  Students stopped going to class, professors canceled classes, and the university effectively shut down for a week.  BAM demanded increased black student enrollment at the university, and through negotiations with Fleming, they got it.   These students were passionate.  They saw that the world could be better, and insisted that it be made so.

Where is this passion today?  I think it is still here, but our students have become much more sophisticated in pushing their agendas, and their agendas are theirs, not ours.

Consider for example, today's MPowered student group.  The students in MPowered are passionate about entrepreneurship.  While many of us old “establishment” professors see entrepreneurship as the process of starting a business, the students in MPowered see it as an empowerment mindset.  Their mission, at root, seems to be to make each student realize that that her ideas have value and power, and to provide each student with intellectual tools for making her ideas impact the world.   They routinely get 3000 “pitches” in their annual pitch contest.  Their latest campaign is a petition drive, 1000 Voices, petitioning our College of Literature, Science and the Arts to provide more classes in entrepreneurship.   As I write this they have over 1200 signatures on their petition.

Another example is BLUElab.  These students seek to create appropriate technologies for the developing world, and to actually deploy them in those countries where they will make a difference.  They put huge energy into this, both in Ann Arbor and at sites in developing counties.  Their latest effort is a wind turbine with woven blades that can be made by local women in Guatemala, producing the product for local markets, and providing double economic impact.

These are just two examples; there are others.  The students in BLUElab and in MPowered are passionate about what they do.  They see that the world could be better, and insist that it become so.

Are these the new student activists?

Why do we do what we do?

The Northwest Ordinance of 1787, enacted by the Congress under the Articles of Confederation, expanded the United States through the creation of the Northwest Territory, a region including the modern State of Michigan.   The ordinance includes the provision that "Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged."   This is the tradition from which the University of Michigan springs.  The University predates the Morrill Act, but the purpose of that act,  “to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions in life,” further codifies the goals of the university, as was subsequently articulated by UM President James Angell in the oft quoted maxim that the UM provides “an uncommon education for the common man.”

For me these capture the “why” for the College of Engineering. 

We admit students to our school because we believe it is good for them, good for the College, and good for society that they become part of the Michigan Engineering Community.  The work we do with these students will allow them to have a positive impact on the world.  No one of us can solve the problems that face humanity at each moment of history, but we aspire to position our graduates to be significant contributors to such solutions.  Through our work with undergraduate and graduate students comes our primary potential for positive impact on the public that we serve.

We also engage in scholarship – engineering research – with the goal of creating the new scientific knowledge and technological possibilities that will be exploited in addressing major challenges such as making solar energy economical, advancing personalized learning, managing the carbon cycle, and more.  We conduct this research because the knowledge created can itself be of value to society, but also because this research work provides our students, both graduate and undergraduates, with invaluable learning experiences that better prepare them to make their own contributions.

In order for our scholarly and educational work to have the best effect, we believe that we must pursue it within context – we cannot divorce our work from the potential problems that it might solve or the people who it might serve.  Equally, because the problems that our community must tackle are complex, it is critical that our community members work with others across differences of purpose, approach, and culture, while bringing a deep and sound technical foundation to this collaborative effort.

What is a public university?

We all know the University of Michigan (UM) is a public or "state" university.  It’s interesting therefore to note that from its founding in 1817 the UM received no funding from the State of Michigan until 1867.  We operated for 50 years as a public university using student fees and revenues from the sale of a federal land grant.   Yet from the 1851 state constitution on, the UM has been governed by a Board of Regents directly elected by the people of the state.  So we are clearly an institution with a mission and responsibility directed towards the people of Michigan, but the state was 30 years old before the UM received state public funding.

Now public universities in the State of Michigan are facing yet another in a long string of reductions in state financial support.  If the new governor’s budget plans go forward, when all the dust settles the University of Michigan will face a 15% reduction in state support, a loss of about $47 million.  The level of state support at the UM is already a small fraction of the total – the state provides only about 20% of the general fund of the university, and by the time this filters down to the College of Engineering we receive only about 10% of our budget from state funds.   So, many ask, are we really a public university?

I think the question misunderstands what it means to be a public, or state, university.  Don’t misunderstand me: I think the State of Michigan should, indeed must, support the UM and the other public universities of the state.  Like all universities we provide a vital public good, and as befits our public mission we give preferences to residents of the state --- preferences in admissions, in financial aid, and in tuition.  But we should not define our public mission in terms of revenue sources.

A public university makes a commitment to access.  This is why state schools are large; no private school has our scale and scope.  Scale is a direct consequence of our commitment to access; throughout its history the UM has grown so as to provide that “uncommon education for the common man” to an ever-widening population.  And we have grown in the scope of disciplines we offer too – spanning the liberal arts and fine arts, professional programs in engineering, nursing, business, law, and more.   A private school would have gone a different route, because their mission does not demand scope or scale.

A public university must also provide educational opportunity that is, as far as possible, independent of previous advantages for disadvantages.   In the US today there are significant differences in higher education opportunity for students from different communities.  These differences are due to differential K12 school resources, both financial and human, and are due also to cultural causes, especially around the ability of communities and parents to prepare their children for college through a knowledge of college preparation expectations, college education benefits, and financial aid systems.

All public universities must accept the responsibility to make a positive impact on the world.  We do this first through the students that we graduate, well prepared to be contributors to society in all the many dimensions through which every person should contribute – as citizens, as caregivers, as economic actors.  But as a public research university the UM takes on an additional responsibility to the public: to make positive impact through the knowledge that we create.  The UM is a pre-Morrill act land grant school, and indeed helped to create the mold of the public research university, but the purposes of the Morrill act for the promotion of a “liberal and practical education” describe our own goals well, and extend to our scholarship.  We must aspire to practical impact -- economic impact, policy impact, aesthetic impact -- that is for the good of the state and the wider society.

With all these responsibilities we accept that the work we do must be for the public good. These aspirations are not about funding sources, or a trade of support for services.  These aspirations are about accepting a principled mission.   We will continue to provide an uncommon educational opportunity for the citizenry of Michigan. We commit that the intellectual results we generate and the alumni we graduate will have positive impact on the public, if not today then in some tomorrow that we do not yet conceive. And as a public university we make these commitments not because the state funds us, but because it is an important mission for humanity.