University of Michigan

The University of Michigan traces its institutional origin to 1817, when the territorial legislature established the Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania, in Detroit. The university was officially renamed in 1821, and Ann Arbor became its permanent site after Michigan statehood in 1837; U-M’s historical materials treat the Detroit founding as continuous with the present university [1].

U-M now operates public research campuses in Ann Arbor, Dearborn and Flint. Its January 2026 facts page reports fall-2025 enrollment of 35,358 undergraduates and 18,130 graduate students in Ann Arbor, 6,199 and 1,806 in Dearborn, and 5,534 and 1,585 in Flint. The same page lists 19 schools and colleges and more than 280 degree programs [2].

Research is a defining part of the institution’s present scale: U-M reports $2.16 billion in research expenditures for fiscal year 2025, up 5.9% from FY2024, while its FY2025 report records a 36.8% decline in the value of new external research awards and anticipates lower expenditures in the following year. The university also reported 615 new inventions and 28 startup companies in 2024 [2] [3].