The great and good of Hollywood crowded into a white tent off Los Angeles’ Sunset Boulevard on March 8 as paparazzi snapped photos and well-dressed speakers braced themselves to take the stage. But they hadn’t gathered to witness honours, accolades or gold-plated statuettes being bestowed. The object of their interest was, in fact, a hole in the ground. The event was being held to celebrate breaking the ground on the site for a $110 million (Rs.605 crore) branch of Boston’s Emerson College — an East Coast university putting down roots on the West Coast. The new Emerson College Los Angeles Center will allow the university to expand the internship course it already runs in the city for visiting undergraduates from its Boston campus, who hope to work in the entertainment industry. Emerson is one of many US institutions opening satellites far from home in search of students, status and partnerships with businesses keen to hire their graduates or licence their patents. “For many schools, it’s an opportunity to attract new students and create new revenue streams,” says Lee Pelton, president of Emerson College. “Higher education is a very competitive market, and individual schools are always seeking ways to differentiate themselves, and this is a way to do that.” The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania has a new facility, too — the institution’s San Francisco operation across the country from its main campus in Philadelphia, has a new and bigger home overlooking the bay. Carnegie Mellon University, based in Pittsburgh, operates a branch in Silicon Valley. Bentley University in Boston is also opening a programme there, in January, focusing on technology design. But by far the most ambitious new campus is being opened in New York City by Cornell University in collaboration with Technion Israel Institute of Technology. Classes will begin later this year in leased space; the $2 billion Thom Mayne-designed campus, which will focus on technology, will open in 2017. By 2043, Cornell’s NYCTech Campus is projected to have an enrolment of 2,500 students and 280 faculty members. Having a New York base will give Cornell access to the city’s technology sector, just as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has Boston’s Route 128 belt and Stanford is in the heart of Silicon Valley, says Lance Collins, dean of engineering at Cornell’s main campus in upstate New York. “Cornell produces (new technology) at the level of all of the top schools, but we’re located in an economy that can’t really commercialise it at the rate that we produce it,” says Collins. Emerson’s move into Hollywood is also ambitious. It, too, has hired Mayne, in its case to design a landmark 10-storey building to house classrooms and apartments for faculty and students, plus alumni and admissions offices. Scheduled to open in early 2014, the building will be big enough for Emerson to add graduate and professional programmes and host industry events and conferences in a part of the country where there is demand for university graduates, but where public higher education…
