Harold T. Shapiro, the University of Michigan’s 10th president, was born on June 8, 1935, in Montreal. Shapiro, 82, earned a bachelor’s degree in 1956 from McGill University, and a Master of Arts degree and Ph.D. from Princeton University. Shapiro joined the U-M faculty in 1964. A year later, he became the co-director of the Research Seminar in Quantitative Economics, which was famous for its economic forecasting models. Before becoming U-M’s president in 1980, he was the university’s vice president for academic affairs. During the beginning of his presidency, in an age of declining state support for universities, Shapiro began “laying out plans for a ‘better paid, better supported, but smaller staff.'” Thus, the “theme of quality over quantity, of ‘smaller but better’ became the guiding principle of the budget reductions of the 1980s.'” Shapiro led U-M from 1980 to 1987.
— Adapted from The Michigan Alumnus, “The Making of the University of Michigan, 1817-1992” by Howard H. Peckham, and president.umich.edu
