Can a Tennessee university help accelerate growth in West Palm Beach?

At a dinner in San Francisco this year, an attendee suggested to Daniel Diermeier, chancellor of Vanderbilt University, that the 150-year-old Nashville institution should build a campus in the Bay Area.

The proposal wasn’t completely out of the ordinary: Vanderbilt was already designing a new campus in West Palm Beach, Fla., signing a 99-year lease for a former theological seminary in Manhattan, and planning an expansion in Nashville.

The Bay Area has no shortage of world-class schools, with Stanford and the University of California, Berkeley flanking the region. Still, “community interest is high,” Diermeier said, particularly regarding the revitalization of downtown San Francisco. For its part, the university is attracted to the region’s technology and artificial intelligence ecosystems, which could attract students and a vibrant source of jobs.

New campuses not only allow universities to meet prospective students where they live, but can also have a significant impact on surrounding towns. Just as professional sports teams have revitalized neighborhoods with real estate projects beyond arenas and stadiums, universities expanding into new communities can spur economic development by attracting new businesses that serve students, faculty and staff. They can also act as community resources with programs and conferences open to the public, and contribute to entrepreneurship through the development of patents and other innovations at the university.

“Research shows that universities are major drivers of long-term growth and prosperity as well as wages,” said Scott Andes, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh who also advises the school’s president on economic development. “The main driver is human capital: talented people coming and staying in a region, thereby increasing the skills of the region. »