What ever happened to DIT, Detroit Institute of Technology?

[Danny]

The Detroit Institute of Technology or DIT. was one of finest urban technical colleges next to Lawrence Tech University. Famous alumni that came out of DIT were Henry Ford, Richard Austin and "Sugar" Chile Robinson. What happen to that college? Did it get absorbed by Wayne State University? Or just suddenly went out of business? Did any of you D-YES-ERS go there?

Any thoughts?

[Zacha341]

Yes, I found a bit of the schools history on wiki...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detroi..._of_Technology

Seems a prep school bearing the DIT name located at Cody emerged within DPS for a time:
http://detroitk12.org/schools/codydit/

The Kresge building they were in was later acquired by WSU... see more info here:
http://www.lostcolleges.com/#!detroi...chnology/c1hoh

[GPCharles]

a/k/a Daddy I Tried?

[EastsideAl]

I had several relatives who went to college or took classes there. My mother's cousin graduated from there, served as a Seabee in India and Burma during WWII, worked for many years as an engineer at GM, served briefly on the DIT board, and was a very successful stock investor who was a multi-millionaire by the time he died.

DIT was killed off in part by the very thing they though was going to save them, the big old Kresge headquarters on Cass Park. DIT had gotten along for years as a smallish trade school feeding the auto industry running out of the Downtown YMCA on Witherell and other nearby rented buildings. So they were overjoyed when Kresge's left them that beautiful building and they could finally have a campus of their own.

However, it cost a lot to convert an office building into a tech college, and that big old building cost a mint to keep up, heat, etc. At a time of quickly rising prices for energy, and everything else, this quickly became a big drag on the college. Also, the Cass Park area was in steep decline in the '70s and it became ever more unpleasant to be around that area and a problem to draw and keep students there. On top of that, the popularity of this sort of tech or "trade" education was waning by the '70s [[it would make a strong comeback some years later), at the same time the very nature of technical fields was beginning to change radically, meaning increasing costs to keep up with new technologies. Drafting tables and slide rules were no longer going to cut it.

When the auto industry, where most of their graduates were supposed to work, fell off a cliff in the mid-'70s and stopped most hiring for several years to come, the handwriting was on the wall and DIT soon collapsed.

[Hermod]

I had several relatives who went to college or took classes there. My mother's cousin graduated from there, served as a Seabee in India and Burma during WWII, worked for many years as an engineer at GM, served briefly on the DIT board, and was a very successful stock investor who was a multi-millionaire by the time he died.

Al: I would doubt it very much if there was a Seabee unit within a thousand miles of
Burma or India during WWII. On the other hand, there was a gigantic force of Army Engineer Construction Battalions and Army Engineer General Service Regiments in India and Burma building the famous Burma Road. I would guess it was an Army "CB" or "construction battalion" in which he served.

[EastsideAl]

Al: I would doubt it very much if there was a Seabee unit within a thousand miles of
Burma or India during WWII. On the other hand, there was a gigantic force of Army Engineer Construction Battalions and Army Engineer General Service Regiments in India and Burma building the famous Burma Road. I would guess it was an Army "CB" or "construction battalion" in which he served.

You would miss that guess. My mother's cousin was a Seabee and spend his entire time overseas during the war based in Calcutta. As I understand it his small group of engineers worked mostly with British officers designing airfields and docking facilities to be built by British units in the swampy river delta conditions that prevail in far eastern India, what's now Bangladesh, and into Burma. I actually have a bunch of his stuff from WWII in storage.

[Wesley Mouch]

DIT died as a very direct result of the expulsion of Iranian students, following the Iranian Revolution and hostage crisis. About a third of their student population was Iranian night-students studying engineering and related fields, presumably to return someday to build their country.

Cancelling their visas led to an economic collapse. Losing 1/3 of your revenues overnight is brutal.

The school did an orderly shutdown. Closed affairs neatly. And I thought they kept their charter intact for the future. Records were transferred to WSU.