<p>Stanford</a> University drops out of race to build 'genius' school in New York City - NY Daily News</p>
<p>Anyone knows why? They were considered one of the two front-runners (the other one being Cornell).</p>
<p>I read that NYC changed the terms of the original proposal, and Stanford wasn’t sure it could get the permits to build what it had envisioned.</p>
<p>IMHO, this wouldn’t have worked in any event. The entrepreneurial vibe of the Stanford campus wouldn’t have transferred to New York.</p>
<p>There were also reportedly some elements of bait-and-switch going on by Bloomberg, which isn’t exactly a promising way to start a relationship like this. There is a pretty big sense of relief about this at Stanford tonight. A lot of people here didn’t think it was such a great idea in the first place. It’s a pretty big loss for Bloomberg though, IMO, if his objective is to create an east coast equivalent of Silicon Valley culture. I don’t think Cornell is going to make that happen.</p>
<p>The east coast equivalent of Silicon Valley already exists—it’s at MIT.</p>
<p>^^^ But the ventures sprouted by MIT don’t do pay into NY’s bottomless tax coffers, only MA’s …</p>
<p>Yes, it looks like the city bureaucracies played bait and switch with Stanford, and Stanford doesn’t need that kind of crap, while Cornell is used to that kind of haggling from city bureaucrats.</p>
<p>I doubt Stanford’s typically Californian culture would have been able to fit in NYC.</p>
<p>Outside of CA, NY (and specifically NYC) has the second largest amount of Stanford alumni. I definitely think the campus could have thrived. People on campus now and probably on this board are relieved because they value exclusivity and didn’t want a dilution of Stanford’s prestige with more degrees and an extension campus (see Stanford daily article on this). This to me is a very superficial and dumb reason to not support it. You don’t see Wharton’s prestige diluted because they have another campus in San Francisco.</p>
<p>Many of the people who had concerns about the proposal weren’t at all worried about “dilution of prestige”, but about distraction and diversion of all kinds of resources, and the potential for ever-escalating expenditures without much real upside for Stanford. Stanfords’ administration knew that the proposal wasn’t being enthusiastically embraced by many different constituent groups here, so once Bloomberg started d*cking around with important terms of the deal at the last minute, it became clear that persistent concerns about how things would play out were well founded.</p>
<p>^ exactly. Nobody has even thought about prestige here (I never heard it come up once, at least): their main qualm has been over the resources that it would divert away from main campus, which has plenty of other projects to fund (undergraduate housing, engineering buildings, arts, etc.).</p>
<p>I don’t know the extent of the restrictions that the city was placing on Stanford, but they must have been significant if Stanford chose to step out (it was really eager from the beginning). I was hoping Stanford would do this, but clearly they don’t think it’s worthwhile here.</p>
<p>Proximity to Wall Street kills any hope that such an extension school would amount to anything. The single biggest problem with this endeavor is that the graduates would’ve headed straight into finance. It would’ve been an engineering school in name only. Graduates largely go for money if given a choice, i.e. finance. Doesn’t matter if they’re trained in technical fields – just look up MIT’s senior surveys, especially pre-2008.</p>
<p>Forget a startup culture, they wouldn’t even have been able to foster ordinary engineering though large corporations. I’m quite happy with this outcome. Any extension campus in NYC will be an embarrassment to its parent. Have fun, Cornell.</p>
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While MIT is Stanford’s academic equal, Route 128 is not SV’s equal. Not even close.</p>
<p>I disagree with you posters (phantasmagoric and others) completely about the superficial dilution of prestige being a non-issue by students on campus. As evidenced here AND by discussions with my classmates on campus.</p>
<p>[Op-Ed:</a> A student?s look at StanfordNYC | Stanford Daily](<a href=“http://www.stanforddaily.com/2011/10/27/op-ed-a-student’s-look-at-stanfordnyc/]Op-Ed:”>Op-Ed: A student’s look at StanfordNYC)</p>
<p>Verbatim from that editorial:</p>
<p>“Most importantly, this whole idea seems likely to devalue the fundamentals of a Stanford education. StanfordNYC would be its own degree-granting institution. That means that students could never set foot on this campus and still get a Stanford diploma. Furthermore, during the proposal application process, Stanford established a partnership with the City College of New York (CCNY) called Stanford@CCNY, which, if Stanford’s proposal is accepted, will allow “highly qualified” City College students to attain a master’s degree from Stanford through joint CCNY-Stanford B.A./M.S. and B.S./M.S. degree programs. How can a university that values its brand so much willingly allow this to happen?”</p>
<p>Blah 2009 and phantasmagoric (and zenkoan) could both be right. The near-turn prospects of more haggling/renegotiation with New York City bureaucracies (not sure if Bloomberg personally is to take the blame) might have been the last straw, but if they could look past that, then the dilution of resources for a costly cross-country enterprise and the dilution of prestige could have emerged as unsurmountable impediments as well.</p>
<p>That press announcement of the partnership with the CCNY with its notorious internal and external politics did strike me as weird and difficult to make workable.</p>
<p>Proximity with Wall Street will draw off some engineering talent, but I am not sure it dooms the project. Many hedge funds report heavy competition from Silicone Valley firms in their recruitment; it is not so one-sided. By the way, many hedge funds have as much if not even more of a startup culture than many (established) Silicone Valley firms.</p>
<p>Blah, I don’t think many students here have a very high opinion of the Daily, nor do they feel that their editorials accurately capture the zeitgeist. The Daily is often guilty of taking statements out of context and of misrepresenting campus culture IMO. I wouldn’t put much stock in their editorials. </p>
<p>4th floor: Silicone Valley firms–LOL. I guess those would be plastic surgeons around LA?</p>
<ol>
<li><p>The east coast Silicon Valley does exist, but it’s not in the northeast…
[Newsweek</a> Calls Raleigh-Durham ?New Silicon Valley?1](<a href=“http://www.thrivenc.com/newsandevents/inewsweeki-calls-raleigh-durham-new-silicon-valley-0]Newsweek”>http://www.thrivenc.com/newsandevents/inewsweeki-calls-raleigh-durham-new-silicon-valley-0)</p></li>
<li><p>Apparantly Stanford pulled out because they knew they were going to lose and didn’t want to: [Cornell</a> Wins Campus Bid - WSJ.com](<a href=“Cornell Wins Campus Bid - WSJ”>Cornell Wins Campus Bid - WSJ)</p></li>
</ol>
<p>“When Stanford withdrew from the competition, several people familiar with the negotiations said the university preferred to quit than lose. Stanford officials saw the “writing on the wall,” said one person familiar with the negotiations.”</p>
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<p>The author never states what the “fundamentals of a Stanford education” are (or why they can’t be replicated - really, setting foot on campus is criterion for a Stanford education?). </p>
<p>Also, StanfordNYC would not have been its own degree-granting institution. As the faculty/leadership said a lot, the programs in NYC would be part of, and run by, their respective parent schools.</p>
<p>That op-ed has the exact kind of sentiment that some students had a few years ago when the president suggested that Stanford expand the size of its incoming class. They didn’t want Stanford to become any less “exclusive” than it is. In this case, it doesn’t harm the exclusivity at all, and even if it could a little bit, scrapping the NYC idea as a result shows the arrogance and conceit of the op-ed author.</p>
<p>In short: this is once person’s point of view, and therefore useless to me.</p>
<p>@DarkIce</p>
<p>The Research Triangle has long been compared to Silicon Valley, some saying they’re equal. But they’re very far off - not comparable in # tech companies, # tech jobs, or VC funding. In one quarter last year, SV took 1/3 of all VC funding in the US (#1). The Research Triangle isn’t on there by name (likely lumped into one of the geographic regions) or in the top 10.</p>
<p><a href=“https://www.pwcmoneytree.com/MTPublic/ns/moneytree/filesource/exhibits/Q1%202010%20MoneyTree%20Report.pdf[/url]”>https://www.pwcmoneytree.com/MTPublic/ns/moneytree/filesource/exhibits/Q1%202010%20MoneyTree%20Report.pdf</a></p>
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<p>One anonymous source says that Stanford saw the “writing on the wall” and would rather quit than lose. That makes no sense, considering Stanford has been the frontrunner from the beginning, and Bloomberg, the EDC, the media all suggested it’d go to Stanford, which had a sweeter deal than Cornell (more funding, direct access to the best professors in EE/CS, connections to venture capitalists on Stanford’s campus, etc.). </p>
<p>In the end, the roadblocks and subsequent loss of autonomy frustrated Stanford too much (which is saying something - if you look at the Stanford-Santa Clara-Palo Alto wars that have long been waging and that spiked in 2000 for the general use permit. So Stanford can handle a lot of bureaucratic BS.)</p>
<p>^^
To be fair, Stanford was “a” frontrunner, but certainly not a foregone conclusion. There were major shortcomings to its proposal, including having never run a satellite campus as Cornell has for over a century in NYC, having relatively few alumni or connections in NYC (compared to Cornell’s 50,000 alumni in the city), and having no experience in big city construction. </p>
<p>When Cornell had the support of nearly the entire university community and partnered with the Technion in Israel, it wiped out Stanford’s dominating advantage in business incubation. So, I think it’s fair to say Stanford did see the writing on the wall that they were not the favored choice and were given the opportunity to withdraw to save face:</p>
<p>“Speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk about the matter publicly, those briefed said that Cornell had long before emerged as the front-runner. ‘It was already very much along the way to this result,’ one said.”</p>
<p>On a side note, I don’t understand why people think one needs to be at the home campus to get a real degree. Top schools from Duke to Johns Hopkins run satellite campuses in other cities and countries that are highly regarded.</p>
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<p>They gave others a chance, but if you kept up with the news about the topic, it was clear from the beginning that Stanford was the ultimate choice/conclusion.</p>
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<p>Those are minor. 1. Running a satellite campus isn’t difficult.* 2. Despite the fact that Cornell, etc. alumni have populated NYC, it <em>stilll</em> isn’t a high-tech hub of the likes of Silicon Valley. Why is that the case? As insiders said early on: if NYC were looking for such, they’d already have had it from the “hometown” universities (including Cornell): that’s why they’re calling for proposals of universities far outside NYC.</p>
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<li>Of all the obstacles, this is one of the least. Stanford has long had many full-fledged non-main-campus locations (like the Hopkins Marine Station, over 100 years), and the many abroad locations (either through BOSP or not). One example is the campus being built in Peking. Also, a large portion of the tech education that Stanford gives each year is through the SCPD (Stanford Center for Professional Development).</li>
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<p>As for big city construction: the difficulty that Stanford faces (from the city of Palo Alto and the county of Santa Clara) for constructing even a small building is enormous, so Stanford would be able to handle this new environment of construction.</p>
<p>Edit: another small thing against Stanford was that the students were overwhelmingly against it, whereas Cornell was 100% for it.</p>
<p>In short, Stanford’s withdrawal seems to be mostly over concerns of autonomy (as always is the reason for withdrawal), rather than over resources or cost, as some may think.</p>
<p>^
You along with me and others are offering pure conjecture, however. You cannot say definitively that the concern of autonomy was ultimately the reason for Stanford’s withdraw, unless you were in the private negotiation meetings. Additionally, I agree with the other posters. It wasn’t clear Stanford was in the forefront. Media coverage probably focused on Stanford because it was a newer more in vogue idea than Cornell coming to NYC. That in of itself should not be indicative of Stanford winning as a foregone conclusion.</p>
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<p>Of course. As the media has reported, there are many “insider” sources who have reported different accounts for why Stanford dropped out.</p>
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<p>If you kept up with the news articles, you’d see why Stanford was clearly the frontrunner. There was even an article about how Stanford and Bloomberg needed to “get a room.” Pick out each criterion outlined by the EDC, and you’d find that Stanford not only dominated in that criterion, but that Cornell fell far behind.</p>
<p>There was little doubt among the know that Stanford would definitely be picked; the uncertainty was whether NYC would pick two, in which case it’d be Stanford and Cornell. Regardless, NYC was looking for an “out-of-town” contender, and Stanford fit that and every other criterion they were looking for, above and beyond.</p>
<p>^
I’m sorry but you’re really concocting a lot of b.s. without any facts to make the pieces fit your story. I think school pride has gotten the best of you as you seem to think Stanford to be infallible and beyond reproach. </p>
<p>What Stanford did for Silicon Valley was held up as the model (which is why Bloomberg mentioned it in early speeches) but he actively courted the Technion (before it partnered with Cornell) which has had similar success in Israel. This was never just a ruse to land Stanford. Otherwise, he would have offered it directly to Stanford as other cities, particularly in Asia, have done many times over. He had no obligation to run a contest. </p>
<p>You probably won’t like this fact, but when you’re talking Carnegie Mellon / Technion / Cornell / Stanford engineering and science, you’re really talking about minimal, if any, difference in quality of education and student. Stanford’s business incubation success is only slightly ahead of the Technion as well. So, it’s logical that when you combine two of those schools, it’s going to trump one.</p>
<p>Just look at your arguments:</p>
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<li><p>Did you really just compare a remote marine research station with 10 faculty to operating a full satellite campus with thousands of staff and students in a major city (like Cornell’s medical campus)? Yeah, Cornell has several such remote research facilities too. No one’s ever mentioned them in this contest because they’re irrelevant to it. Just kind of reinforces Stanford’s lack of experience in this realm.</p></li>
<li><p>If you think building a structure in the suburban hometown of Palo Alto is just like undertaking a multi-billion dollar construction project in Manhattan, I’m not really sure what to say except to suggest more travel and exposure after you graduate.</p></li>
<li><p>Cornell isn’t a “hometown” university in NYC. Its campus is about 5 hours away from NYC. The lack of a top-ranked engineering program to work with and foster innovation in the city is why they created this contest in the first place. To your point, a large number of Stanford alumni in Los Angeles has not created a hub of technology research and innovation there.</p></li>
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<p>The people involved in the negotiations - not the abstract media you keep referencing but never citing - said Stanford was losing long before they dropped out. Cornell simply submitted a better, more effective proposal with far stronger internal support and fund raising. As time went on, Stanford proved to not be able to compete. Sorry.</p>
<p>For the record - I have nothing but respect for Stanford. The only reason I’m even discussing this with you is because you seem determined to rewrite reality to save your own pride and I don’t think that’s right. It really has nothing to do with the school itself.</p>