Do the interns get payed, or is this "school" designed to provide free workers to corporations? Also, we do not need a branch of a Boston school which wishes to insert Boston citizens into positions in Washington State. Northeastern seems to be nothing but a new-fangled University of Phoenix.

Further, the tech promoters are getting disgusting. There is nothing exciting or wonderful about these corporations, and most only exist because of subsidy. It seems more like a bunch of self-identified elites patting each other on the back. I guess, patting-each-other-on-the-back is a good way to score more subsidy.

JHande nails it. We do need additional Universities in Western Washington, not another University of Phoenix. I actually did an Honor's Thesis on this very subject, in Massachusetts, in the late 80's, about the time the Mass Miracle, Dukakis, and Lotus were busting, all progressive advancements along the lines of Apple, and at least one of same the victim of a Washington State Corporate/Legal conspiracy.

Northeastern University never appeared in my research as any sort of leader in STEM, at that time. Mass's success in technical fields can be attributed to three letters, MIT, with only a few exceptions.

In hindsight it is most likely that the elites of the likes of Washburn and crew were in fact responsible for that **first** politically related tech crash - in part through their own failings, in part through Wall Street folks who pander to same.

Of the highest concern should be the techniques utilized by these individuals - techniques that Washburn himself has practiced here in Seattle - specifically the manipulation of the cycle of sexual and racial hate in order to control public and private enterprises - a most disgusting level of evil that is NOT based on being victim themselves.

Mega Fail, as is the entire corporate empire of the 21st Century, and these folks need to be brought to account. And, hey, if we do it right I bet there will be enough left over to start the Puget Sound equivalent of Stanford....

jhande: Perhaps you could do 10 seconds of research before dashing off a totally uninformed, xenophobic and ignorant post. So I'll help:

* Northeastern co-op students are paid, and must work at a job in their field. It's a terrific program, and it has made it possible for a lot of working-class kids to get a solid education.

* Northeastern was established in 1898. It is a long-established Boston institution with 20,000 undergrad and graduate students. It is anything but "a new-fangled University of Phoenix."

The fact is, this state is sadly lacking in higher education opportunities. So if a respected private institution decides to fill that gap more power to them.

Interns may get a stipend; but interns are not payed. I also do not see many "working class kids" paying 24,000-40,000 dollars a year; and are the "targeted students" of 28-45 really "working class kids"? No.

The article says that the "University" sees these franchised branches as good "business"; and is opening up new franchises around the nation. That is exactly like University of Phoenix, which also wishes to have a national "footprint". So, you may respect this "University"; but I don't. This seems an attempt to make profit and that is all.

Oh, and I will research, and find out what tax breaks, subsidy, and other goodies this "University" gets.

Further, the use of the term "xenophobia" is thrown around so much in an incorrect manner, that it is simply meaningless.

The Crosscut article on the new Northeastern campus in the SLU neighborhood makes the point that there is a generally recognized gap in higher education opportunities in our state and, in the Puget Sound region in particular.

On a sheer numbers basis, our burgeoning technically trained talent is currently imported from outside of Pugetopolis - people who were educated elsewhere and have migrated here to work in the aerospace, computer technology, e-marketing or bioscience industries. One might take exception that there is a problem by pointing to the fact that two out of four of the country’s ten wealthiest technology entrepreneurs that reside in the Seattle area were born here (Bill Gates and Paul Allen). But I will point out that none of the four (also including Steve Balmer and Jeff Bezos) attended University here. At least two of these four didn’t bother to finish college, but even they found it necessary to go to college near Boston in order to become restless rather than simply cross Portage Bay consumed with Husky Fever.

Our region has the luxury of having an unparalleled natural attractant of Puget Sound, the Cascade and Olympic Mountains, Pacific Ocean and the deserts of Eastern Washington all within view or a relatively short drive of the Seattle area. Companies locate here knowing they have a competitive advantage in recruiting the moment a prospective hire sees Mount Rainier out the plane’s window on approach to SeaTac. Given this, we better take care of the natural world here, as it is our secret weapon in the global economy, but that is the topic for another comment to another article.

Back to Northeastern University, nearly everyone interviewed for this article recognized that our local academic capacity is far below needs, and falling further behind every day. When I left the region with two shinny new diplomas from the UW in 1982 and moved out of state to seek my future as an Oceanographer, there were three notable institutes of higher learning in Seattle. When I returned nearly 14 years later, there were... still three notable institutes of higher learning.

After doing a tour of the country that included the Gulf Coast and the Washington D.C. area, I became accustomed to a highly defined academic choice structure and hierarchy that starts in Montessori school and hopefully ends with an invitation to one or more prestigious, and usually private, Universities. In the east, public school is for wimps. Driven in part by need – the major public university system so prevalent in the west did not exist when many of these schools were started – in part by current demand, and in part by good marketing, there are a lot of colleges and universities to choose from in that region.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the Boston area, where there is something like 35 colleges and universities. Higher education is an industry in and of itself there (and now apparently an export commodity). These institutions create an environment of intellectual risk taking and a community of bright young people that is fertile ground for incubating new ideas and businesses. I do not have the facts at my finger tips, but I seem to recall the number of startups generated in Boston exceeds those in Seattle (but not the San Francisco Bay area where they have sun, culture, and no humidity) and I would suggest that many of those Boston area startups are directly or indirectly related to the proximity of so many institutes of higher learning.

So my question is this, can Seattle’s natural environment and current string of business successes compete in the long run with Boston’s academic infrastructure, or the Bay area’s critical mass of intellectual talent in terms remaining on the cutting edge of technology and entrepreneurship? The University of Washington’s C4C program is an attempt to increase their relevance and direct contributions to the economic health and viability of region. I suggest we need far more than this, and that the public higher education system, ultimately controlled as it is by a diverse, contentious and stingy legislature, is ill equipped to provide the kind of academic training and leadership our region, people and the times deserve.

Fast forward 17 years from my return to the region, and over 30 years from my original departure, and we now have only three major institutes of higher education in Seattle proper for undergraduate training. It can be argued that the state has increased its investment starting two new college campuses in Bothell and Tacoma, but I suggest this was a belated response to demographics, not a strategic investment in the region by offering an elite or endowed institution that can compete for top raw academic talent that will foster the new ideas, innovations and businesses of future with the highest profile campuses in the country or the world. The new Northeastern SLU campus is clearly an attempt to help fill this need.

When I arrived back in the Northwest and reflected on the state of higher ed. compared with other parts of the country, I thought wouldn’t it be great if Bill Gates and Paul Allen (or Steve Balmer or Jeff Bezos) left a legacy here, similar to the legacies left by the extremely wealthy of different eras in east and mid west, by starting academic institutions that bared their names? Let’s say Gates Institute of Technology in Bellevue, or Allen (or Vulcan?) University in South Seattle (or SLU!), where the passions of these individuals could be expressed and played out in the imaginations of future generations of bright young people from the neighborhood, the region, or all over the world, and providing human resources and spark for continued global leadership in technology, business, art, and thought.

Well, well said and an interesting idea. As an aside, population density, an extra 200 hundred years of development (and endowment), inner city rot, and historic segregation all play significant and obvious rolls in the development of the traditional East Coast path to higher education, though those lines are becoming more blurred all the time in many cities, or at least in many outlying suburbs. Obviously the Northwest is comparatively merely a teenager which in many ways makes the carving of new pathways that much more possible. But I'm not sure it is practical to rely on a few whales to solve these perceived deficiencies. On the other hand, isn't Bezos due?

Oh damn, I meant "roles," not rolls. Apparently I shouldn't write on an empty stomach. So much for that East Coast private prep school education.

And it was announced this week that Stanford is the first university to raise over $1 Billion dollars in one year, most of it from alumni. UW will take a very long time to reach that goal from alumni. Big private resources could kick off an elite research and education institution like that here. But once momentum is built, it is self sustaining and nearly immune to self inflicted wounds from Olympia. Silicon Valley is the place Stanford built. Redmond is the place Mount Rainier and Puget Sound built (with help from Paul, Bill and a host of others - many who went to Stanford!) Wouldn't it be great to have both great public and private institutions of higher learning here? Talk about trickle down... I'm just sayin.

Be careful what you wish for; educational institutions, including large publics like UW, are part of the oligarchy and don't give a sh*t about the their neighborhoods. As if Allentown is a neighborhood. Cf. http://gothamist.com/2012/06/06/nyus_still_massive_expansion_gets_c.php http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/26/nyregion/new-york-city-sued-over-approval-of-nyu-expansion-plan.html?_r=0 http://neighbors.columbia.edu/pages/manplanning/ http://philadelphianeighborhoods.com/2012/12/04/powelton-village-university-expansion-destroys-a-community/ http://www.neontommy.com/news/2012/12/usc-university-village-neighborhood-advocates-sought-20-million-fund-soften-blow-commun and so on

Ha! Unless you have any idea about NYC, Robert Moses, and super block Universities, don't throw in articles those NYC articles.

Those universities were put in districts that were blight and had dwindling futures. Each University (NYU, Fordham LC, Columbia, etc...) has helped transform the areas the currently reside in.

I know NYC and much of its history, and I know the history of Columbia very well (I'm an alum) and NYU fairly well. NYU was never in a "blighted" neighborhood (Washington Square, Greenwich Village). Columbia has encroached on Harlem over the years, but its base on Morningside Heights was never "blighted" either. "Dwindling futures" is a ludicrous claim for either locale at any point in time.

I did not cite Fordham, the Jesuit university; a quick search turns up its own expansion plans at the Lincoln Center campus. Another blighted neighborhood? I don't think so: http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/08/fordham-slams-gate-to-litigious-neighbors/

If you want to challenge my knowledge of obnoxious development behavior you should try one of the non-NYC examples.

As pointed out by numerous people including those at UW, the Seattle area lacks the research and graduate level education needed to research and create new technologies and advance current ones.

There are so many truly gifted young adults that are having to leave the area for Standford, MIT, CIT, etc... because UW simply cannot (legally or fiscally according to outspoken professors) meet the quality demand.

That is the reason NeU targeted Seattle AND Charlotte for these graduate campuses. Seattle is not Boston, nor is it San Fran, and is possibly going to be bested by NYC, Charlotte, or maybe another city if something doesn't change.