Joining Trend, College Grows Beyond Name
Published: December 27, 2011
After a century firmly anchored in
Northeastern, known for its co-op program in which undergraduates spend significant amounts of time in the workplace, opened its first satellite campus this fall in Charlotte, N.C., and is planning a second in Seattle next year; outposts in Austin, Tex., Minnesota and Silicon Valley are under discussion.
The goal is to offer master’s degrees in industries like cybersecurity, health informatics and project management, matching programs with each city’s industries and labor needs, through a mix of virtual learning and fly-ins from professors based in
While higher education has long been seen as a local enterprise, with universities deeply enmeshed in their communities, the explosion of online institutions, particularly for-profit career colleges like the
“This is a time of huge transition in an industry that hasn’t changed much since the Middle Ages,” said Charles P. Bird, a former vice president of
Northeastern has hired 261 tenured and tenure-track professors in the last five years, about twice as many as in the previous five, and plans to add 200 more in the next three years — all of whom will be based at the home campus in Boston.
“There’s been a real knowledge explosion that has created new industries with new needs for expertise,” said Joseph E. Aoun, the university’s president. “We don’t want to make the mistake the railways did. They didn’t think of themselves as being broadly in the transportation industry, so they missed the opportunity to build air travel. We’re in the business of higher education, and where there’s a new space, we want to step in.”
Until recently, most universities looking to expand have gone overseas, starting branches in regions where American-style higher education is a huge draw: first in
But
Andrew Delbanco, a
Some experts are skeptical that an institution entering new territory can compete with the existing local colleges and universities.
“If I were looking to move into a new region,” said Mark G. Yudof, president of the
So far,
Drexel, a century-old research university of about 18,000 students in
“I went out there my third week, and my conclusion was that the graduate center was struggling and needed a lot of attention,” Mr. Fry said. “We needed about 400 students to put ourselves in a break-even position, and we’ve had to fight hard to get to 300.”
Mr. Fry said that Drexel would not walk away from
“When it comes down to expanding with the bricks or doing it with the clicks, I think we’ll do it with the clicks,” he said. “To work your way into a new community, where you’re not very well known, you’ve got to be there at least 10 years and build all those relationships.”
Northeastern is working on it, with its downtown
“Bill Gates says place is going to matter less and less for universities in the future, but I think that’s wrong,” said Mr. Aoun, Northeastern’s president. “I think a successful university has to be part of a community.”
Before choosing
Northeastern, which has seen a surge in undergraduate applications in recent years, has
Mr. Aoun said he expected new benefits from the
“We have already been approached about new opportunities, including a partnership with Duke Energy,” Mr. Aoun said. “We’re trying to be the first university with a national network. Because of our co-op program, we already have 2,500 corporations and N.G.O.s that work with us,” he added, referring to nongovernmental organizations.
Cheryl Richards, the regional dean in
Michael Smith, president of Charlotte Center City Partners, said colleges in his city did not see Northeastern’s expansion as a threat, perhaps because its programs are more expensive and aimed at different types of students than existing ones. “They know who they are, and they’ve built some incredible best practices in the way they work with corporations,” he said.
Across the country, Danny Westneat, who writes a twice weekly column for The Seattle Times, questioned why Northeastern seemed ready to do what local universities could not. “I know, I should be thankful a midrank school from the East has the vision and gumption to expand higher ed for us,” Mr. Westneat wrote recently. “It’s just that it exposes how we seem to be lacking these qualities right now ourselves.”
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