“It will be mobbed,” Charlie Munger predicted last spring as the $155 million Munger Graduate Residences neared completion. “The problem will be telling people they can’t get in.”
Not for the first time, the nonagenarian U-M grad and vice-chairman of Berkshire Hathaway was right: it turned out that more than 1,000 grad students were eager to pay $850-$950 a month to move into the eight-story dorm at Division and Packard.
Applicants were winnowed through an intricate selection process that included three essays and a project presentation on “transdisciplinary learning.” Munger–who according to Berkshire Hathaway chairman Warren Buffett designed the building himself–wants to break up academic silos by having students from different fields share large (three- to seven-bedroom) apartments.
The 600 winners filled out forms rating their interest in everything from poverty to modern warfare. Then a group of “planning fellows”–also funded by Munger’s $110 million gift–spent three months matchmaking, trying to create intellectually optimal groups of suite mates.
Planning fellow Ashley Adams says the themes headlining her suite are cultural competency and social justice. “We actually have a lot of social identities within the suite … and are willing to understand, willing to attempt to be competent in, other cultures.”
The social engineering isn’t mandatory–participation in dorm activities is optional, and residents can ask to change apartments if the matchmaking goes bad. But even if some leave, the private bed-bath suites won’t go empty: more than 100 people are still on the waiting list.
