It can be argued that it was in the Midwest, in towns such as Ann Arbor and Madison, that the early paradigm for the true public university in America first evolved, a paradigm capable of responding to the needs of a rapidly changing nation in the 19th Century and that still dominates higher education today. In many ways, the University of Michigan has been throughout its history the flagship of public higher education in America. Although the University of Michigan was not the first of the state universities, it was the first to be free of sectarian control, created as a true public institution, and responsive to the people of its state.
The University of Michigan (or more accurately, the Catholepistimead or University of Michigania) was established in 1817 in the village of Detroit, two decades before Michigan entered the Union, by an act of the Northwest Territorial government and financed through the sale of Indian lands granted by the United States Congress. The founding principle for the university can be found in the familiar words of the Northwest Ordinance, chiseled on the frieze of the most prominent building on today’s campus, Angell Hall: “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 clearly echoes the Jeffersonian ideal of education for all, to the extent of an individual’s capacity, as the key to creating the educated citizenry necessary for a democracy to flourish.
Actually, the first incarnation of the University of Michigan (aka “Catholepistemiad”) was not a university but rather a centralized system of schools, borrowing a model from the imperial University of France founded by Napoleon a decade earlier. It was only after the State of Michigan entered the Union in 1837 that a new plan was adopted to shift the university beyond secondary education, establishing it as a “state” university after the Prussian system, with programs in literature, science and arts; medicine; and law–the first three academic departments of the new university.
Both because the university had already been in existence for two decades before the State of Michigan entered the Union in 1837, and because of the frontier society’s deep distrust of politics and politicians, the new state’s early constitution (1851) granted the university an unusual degree of autonomy as a “coordinate branch of state government,” with full powers over all university matters granted to its governing board of regents, although surprisingly enough it did not state the purpose of the university. This constitutional autonomy, together with the fact that the university was actually established by the territorial government and supported through a land grant from the U.S. Congress, has shaped an important feature of the university’s character. In financial terms, the University of Michigan was actually a United States land grant university supported entirely by the sale of its federal lands and student fees rather than state resources until after the Civil War. Hence throughout its history the university has regarded itself as much as a national university as a state university, albeit with some discretion when dealing with the Michigan State Legislature. This broader heritage has also been reflected in the university’s student enrollment, which has always been characterized by an unusually high percentage of out-of-state and international students. Furthermore, Michigan’s constitutional autonomy, periodically reaffirmed through court tests and constitutional convention, has enabled the university to have much more control over its own destiny than most other public universities.
Implicit in the new constitution was also a provision that the university’s regents be determined by statewide popular election, again reflecting public dissatisfaction with both the selection and performance of the early-appointed regents. (The last appointed board retaliated by firing the professors at the university.) The first assignment of the newly elected board was to select a president for the university (after inviting back the fired professors). After an extensive search, they elected Henry Philip Tappan, a broadly educated professor of philosophy from New York, as the first president of the reconfigured university.
Tappan arrived in Ann Arbor in 1852, determined to build a university very different from those characterizing the colonial colleges of 19th century America. He was strongly influenced by European leaders such as von Humboldt, who stressed the importance of combining specialized research with humanistic teaching to define the intellectual structure of the university. Tappan articulated a vision of the university as a capstone of civilization, a repository for the accumulated knowledge of mankind, and a home for scholars dedicated to the expansion of human understanding. In his words, “a university is the highest possible form of an institution of learning. It embraces every branch of knowledge and all possible means of making new investigations and thus advancing knowledge.”
In Tappan’s view, the United States had no true universities, at least in the European sense. With the University of Michigan’s founding heritage from both the French and Prussian systems, he believed he could build such an institution in the frontier state of Michigan. And build it, he did, attracting distinguished scholars to the faculty such as Andrew D. White and Charles Kendall Adams and placing an emphasis on graduate study and research and investing in major research facilities.
To be sure, the early colonial colleges such as Harvard and Yale were established much earlier by the states (or colonies), as were several institutions in the south such as the Universities of North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. But all were governed by clergymen, with the mission of preparing young men for leadership in church or state. The University of Michigan, pre-dating Thomas Jefferson’s University of Virginia by two years, was firmly established as a public university with no religious affiliation. Michigan’s status as a land-grant university, provided through Congressional action, pre-dates the Land-Grant Acts establishing the great state universities (e.g., the Morrill Act of 1862) by almost half-a-century.
Of course, in many other ways, the university was still a frontier institution, as the early images of the campus suggest. Yet even at this early stage, the University of Michigan already exhibited many of the characteristics we see in today’s universities.
One might even make the claim that the University of Michigan was not only the first truly public university in America and one of its first land-grant universities, but also possibly even its first true university, at least in the sense that we would understand it today. To be sure, the early colonial colleges such as Harvard and Yale were established much earlier by the states (or colonies), as were several institutions in the south such as the Universities of North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. But all were governed by clergymen, with the mission of preparing young men for leadership in church or state. The University of Michigan, pre-dating Thomas Jefferson’s University of Virginia by two years, was firmly established as a public university with no religious affiliation. Michigan’s status as a land-grant university, provided through Congressional action, pre-dates the Land-Grant Acts establishing the great state universities (e.g., the Morrill Act of 1862) by almost half-a-century. And Henry Tappan’s vision of Michigan as a true university, stressing scholarship and scientific research along with instruction, pre-dates other early American universities such as Cornell University (founded by Andrew D. White, one of Tappan’s faculty members at Michigan) and Johns Hopkins University by two decades.
One can make a strong case that the University of Michigan was the first attempt to build a true university in the New World. At a time when the colonial colleges were using the classical curriculum to “transform savages into gentlemen”, much as the British public school, Michigan’s first president, Henry Tappan brought to Ann Arbor in 1852 a vision of building a true university in the European sense, which would not only conduct instruction and advanced scholarship, but also respond to popular needs. He aimed to develop “an institution that would cultivate the originality and genius of those seeking knowledge beyond the traditional curriculum, with a graduate school in which diligent and responsible students could pursue their studies and research under the eye of learned scholars in an environment of enormous resources in books, laboratories, and museums” (Peckham, 1963).
Henry Tappan’s vision of Michigan as a true university, stressing scholarship and scientific research along with instruction, pre-dates other early American universities such as Cornell University (founded by Andrew D. White, one of Tappan’s faculty members at Michigan) and Johns Hopkins University by two decades. Michigan faculty members carried this broader concept of the university with them as they moved on to leadership roles at other institutions (e.g., Andrew Dixon White at Cornell, Charles Kendall Adams at Cornell and Wisconsin, and Erastus Haven at Northwestern). (Rudolph, 1962)
