Universities as city saviors

[chronicle_moderator]

Now more than ever, higher education is seen as the key to helping manufacturing-based cities catch up and compete in a highly skilled global economy. As a result, in postindustrial cities like Rochester, N.Y., college leaders are seeking closer partnerships with civic and business leaders to harness the universities' strengths. But the role of the university as the automobile factory of the modern economy is not embraced by all, on campus or in city hall. Should universities seek to become the economic drivers of their local economies? Are the potential payoffs, for both the college and the community, worth it?
Read The University as Economic ... and An Expanding Arizona ...

[kaysixteen]

It seems that when unis seek to do this, or allow themselves to be led into doing so, they compromise alot about what makes a university different from a for-profit business, or even a not-for profit 'foundation'-type enterprise.   Recently there has been a brouhaha surrounding SUNY Buffalo's decision to shutter the three year old 'School of Informatics' and return its constituent elements to the schools they had been drawn from.  Self-interested parties aside (such as the dean who had been brought in to run the new school in the first place, and has been sacked), the whining seems to come from corporate interests (AT&T ponied up big dollars to the informatics program at UB, and seemed to want to use the faculty there as quasi-corporate researchers) as well as civic/ government officials who will whine about anything like this, rather than face the blame for the basket case Buffalo has been allowed to become.

Ah, Buffalo.

[norvell]

I see the recent increased focus on commercializing University research as a positive economic factor for both the academic institution and the community. One problem that might come is when the view of "Universities as city saviors" takes hold. Spin-off companies and increased research grants can only do so much, and as such, should be viewed as an important segment of the economic development landscape but not the "savior".