<p>Is</a> Stanford Too Close to Silicon Valley? : The New Yorker</p>
<p>One notion examined by the article was the "T-shaped" student....depth in one area, but breadth in a range of subjects.</p>
<p>SevenDad- Thanks for posting this article. I’m a Stanford alum and have worked on Stanford’s land use plans from the government side. I found the first part of the article very accurate in terms of how they characterize Stanford. I think that many of the seeds of the current culture existed at the time that I was a student, but that under Hennessy this culture has really exploded. I’m honestly not entirely happy with the direction that Stanford has taken. </p>
<p>One thing that the article fails to mention is the difference in the character of the endowment between Stanford and its east coast peers/rivals. Stanford is a much younger institution than HYP etc. It doesn’t have 400 years of endowment building to rest on. You could say that it doesn’t have the luxury of pursuing knowledge for its own sake that an institution with a more established endowment has. Stanford’s great asset is its land. The University owns 8,000 acres, 2,000 of which are occupied by then central campus and around 3,000-4,000 of which are open space. The remaining land is in income-generating use, including the Stanford Research Park (where many tech firms are located) and the “venture capital strip mall” along Sand Hill Road. So, on top of the academic relationships, there is also a land use relationsip. All of these relationships have been instrumental in the University’s relatively fast rise to prominence. </p>
<p>On the topic of the new York campus - while I know nothing about that particular situation, I do know that Stanford can drive a hard bargain when it comes to government relations. Their land use activities on their campus have been far from being settled with “just a handshake”. I would guess that there’s another side to the story of the New York campus,</p>
<p>@friendlymom, your land use points are interesting, especially considering how Stanford’s own research activities have contributed to making the area such a goldmine. What land to own!</p>
<p>I’m not sure how the younger age of the endowment makes a difference.
The endowments are (2011 numbers from Wikipedia):
Harvard $31.7 billion
Yale $19.4 billion
Princeton $17.1 billion
Stanford $16.5 billion</p>
<p>The only other schools around 10 or more are MIT (9.7) and the U Texas system (17.1). (So, given the schools not on the list, one lesson is that there are fabulous schools with substantially lower endowments, just like in the prep school world!). </p>
<p>I gave my humanities-oriented senior (who I think fits the T-shape mentioned by SevenDad) that article when she was making her college decision, so that she would take care to talk to non-engineers there. The humanities students she spoke to are ridiculously happy.</p>