 Michael " Mike " Wazowski , a young monster , gets inspired to become a scarer ( a monster who enters the human world at night to scare children and harvest their screams for energy ) when he grows up after visiting Monsters Inc . , Monstropolis ' most profitable scaring company , on a school field trip . Eleven years later , Mike is a first @-@ year scare major at Monsters University , where he meets fellow monster James P. " Sulley " Sullivan . Mike studies hard , while the privileged Sulley , coming from a family of talented scarers , relies only on his natural ability and begins to falter . As the semester progresses , Mike and Sulley attempt to join a fraternity , but only Sulley is accepted into Roar Omega Roar , the strongest fraternity on campus . At the semester 's final exam , a fight between the two causes them to accidentally break Dean Abigail Hardscrabble 's cherished Scream Can . Hardscrabble promptly fails both of them immediately , stating that Sulley does not study enough , and Mike is not scary enough . 
