Our football blog series is back for the third straight year! As before, we’ll use the football season as an impetus to compare Ann Arbor to cities and towns on this year’s schedule. And the question is always – how does Ann Arbor compare to other college towns in the US?
This week, the Wolverines face off with Southern Methodist University – SMU. The two teams have only played each other once, when Michigan came away with a 27-16 victory in 1963. That is not a big enough sample size to extrapolate any relationship, so we’ll have to wait until Saturday to get some new data.
Southern Methodist University is a private institution founded in 1911, and despite its name, is nonsectarian in its teaching. It’s home city, Dallas, is the ninth largest US city by population, at 1.3 million. That is nearly 11 times larger than the city of Ann Arbor – and 3rd on the Forbes list of the Fastest Growing Cities in America.
Data Dive
Where do we get our numbers? And what do they mean?
- Population comes from the US Census, 2017 Population Estimates. Check out Ann Arbor’s data here.
- Enrollment comes from each university’s website (what they report on enrollment).
- Research spend comes from the National Science Foundation Rankings by Total R&D Expenditures.
- Educational attainment comes from the US Census 2012-2016 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates. It can be a bit confusing – we look specifically at the population over the age of 25, and the highest level attained. Check out Ann Arbor’s data here.
- The rankings come from US News & World Report unless otherwise mentioned.
