ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the implementation of the certificate system at the University of Michigan, which marks higher education's transition from passive to active student recruitment and, by extension, from passive to active participation in the work of modern society. Michigan was established as part of a comprehensive scheme for public education adopted by the Michigan Legislature soon after the state's admission to the Union in 1837. In 1870, the Michigan faculty unanimously adopted the certificate system of admission despite lack of any American precedent and despite lack of understanding of the German example by most of the faculty. Michigan's success in implementing the certificate system provided contemporaries with an important example of how admissions policies could be employed to bring about wider reform. Admission by certificate helped integrate the state's hitherto unrelated public educational institutions into a coordinated system. That system provided for the successful selection of the University's entering class by the state's high schools.
