Michigan's ability to attract and retain high-achieving students is essential to its continuing success and leadership. However, with each passing year and each inevitable increase in tuition and living costs, the competition for students among America's leading universities becomes more aggressive and more costly. For many undergraduates, confronted with the prospect of daunting loans, financial aid has become the deciding factor in their choice of colleges. And in this domain, LSA lags far behind its chief competitors.

For the sake of our students present and future, and in the interest of maintaining the strength and dynamism of LSA, we can and must do better in providing scholarships for deserving undergraduates. Our goal is to generate $100 million in new endowed scholarship funds by the 2008-09 academic year.