<p>Northeastern transformed from a typical unknown college into one of the nation's renowned universities over the past years. How did Northeastern achieve its reputation? Is it mainly from the co-op programs?</p>
<p>The university made a conscious decision that it wanted to change from a commuter school into a national research university, and they made decisions accordingly.
They are hiring a lot of new tenured and tenure track professors, making an investment in scholarships to recruit top students, improving the academics, and branding themselves as the university they want to become. But they are not abandoning the co-op roots, and that’s what makes the university unique. Co-op was originally a necessity to pay for school, and provided practical experience for the practical careers for which the university was training its students. It would be hard to quantify the role of co-op in Northeastern’s rise, but I personally feel that it has played a role. It gives students a unique experience that I think is really beneficial, not only in helping to find jobs after graduation, but also in becoming better students who can integrate theory and practice.</p>
<p>Back in the day when Northeastern was an “unknown” college it was very well known in the Boston area. It provided opportunities to many first generation college students with a practical, applied focus. Coop, the notion of “working your way through school” was looked down on by academics. Coop was considered too working class to some.</p>
<p>Now in the 21st century, the idea of getting out of the classroom and receiving some real world experience, either through coop, research or international work or study, is increasingly valued by most levels of society.</p>
<p>I don’t think Northeastern really has a reputation as a tier 1 research university- yet. They’ve made great strides in a very short amount of time, and with very limited resources. In the past 50 years, the only other private university to transform themselves in such a quick amount of time was Emory University, and that took billions of dollars of donations. Emory also benefited from being the only major private university in an up-and-coming metropolis, which has resulted in strategic partnerships (the Carter Center, the CDC, Coca-Cola, etc.). Given Northeastern’s current long term strategic plan and financials, it will be difficult to further establish itself as a pre-eminent destination due to limited resources in comparison to other local universities (a $600m endowment vs. 1.6B for BC/Tufts and with less of a donor base). I look forward to watching NU continue to rise - it is a very interesting case study.</p>
<p>An interesting article WSJ mentioned Northeastern University:</p>
<p>[Colleges</a> Rise as They Reject - WSJ.com](<a href=“Colleges Rise as They Reject - WSJ”>Colleges Rise as They Reject - WSJ)</p>
<p>At one time back in the 80’s the were the largest private university in the country, based on enrollment.</p>
<p>They actually reduced the size of the student body as they morphed from a local commuter school to a regional university. Older alumni remember huge parking lots that been built over.</p>