Wikipedia talk:Education program archive/University of Michigan/History 232: 22 Ways to Think about the History of The University of Michigan (Winter 2015)/Course description

The current heated discussion over the value and content of higher education in America raises important issues that the history of the University of Michigan can help illuminate. The University of Michigan opened in 1817 with two instructors and no students. It has risen from that humble beginning to become one of the leading intellectual centers in the world. Its development through time, like that of any institution, was neither automatic nor foreordained. Rather it involved real – sometimes hard – decisions by historical actors who tried to negotiate the tensions surrounding the American public university and present almost from the beginning. But it is important to note that these questions, issues, and tensions have been constant throughout the history of this University: between the University’s public funding and missions and its need for intellectual freedom; between the needs of undergraduates and the professionalization of its faculty; between an ideology of openness and inclusion and the reality of exclusion and prejudice; between aspirations for world class intellectual leadership and the limited state resources to fund it; between the practical needs and desires of students and the research of the faculty; and between the “practical” spirit of the country and the tradition of intellectual life. It is no exaggeration to say, in fact, that for most of its history the University has existed in a sometimes creative, sometimes destructive tension with its most important constituencies.

This course has been selected to be part of the LSA “22 Ways” series because the history of the University is open to many ways of “thinking”: by discipline, by topic, and by period of its history. Moreover, understanding the way the University was formed in and through time may be helpful to students wondering how to take best advantage of its resources today. To illustrate these varied approaches and illuminate the University’s history, more than a dozen guest lecturers have been invited to speak to the class, including experts in various historical topics and actors in the recent history of the University. The materials provided by these visitors – e.g. lectures, readings, and discussions– are an essential part of the course, and students will be required to master them as part of their course responsibilities.

We will investigate the history of the University together in several ways: through the information shared in lectures and readings, by actually writing short entries on the history of the University for Wikipedia, and by helping update and prepare materials relevant for the history of the University.

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