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A Crisis for Urban Universities
Academic institutions have driven the revival of many U.S. cities, but the pandemic is threatening the sources of their success.
By Richard Florida and Jeffrey Selingo
More than a month after the Covid-19 pandemic forced universities across the U.S. to shut down their campuses and quickly shift to online learning, many college officials are warning that they may not be able to reopen in the fall. Urban colleges and universities are particularly vulnerable.
More than half of the nation’s students attend college in metro areas with more than one million people. Today, greater New York City is the nation’s largest college town, with more than one million students, followed by Los Angeles with 950,000 and Chicago with 520,000. Indeed, Los Angeles is on par with famed college towns like Austin, Texas, with college students making up some 7% of its population.
This a relatively recent development, and urban universities are still more fragile than they might seem. Traditionally, higher education in America meant bucolic campuses nestled in small towns and rural areas. This is true not just of small liberal-arts colleges in New England, like Amherst, Williams and Middlebury, but also of many of the major state universities in the Midwest and Ivy League schools like Cornell and Dartmouth.
Not too long ago, urban universities such as New York University, the University of Southern California and Boston University had lackluster academic reputations. They also suffered from being located in what were perceived as higher-crime areas. Many of the neighborhoods surrounding these urban campuses were damaged by the misguided urban renewal strategies of the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s.
But as the back-to-the-city movement hit its stride in the late 1990s, urban universities were in vogue. Even those in smaller metro areas, like Brown University in Providence, R.I., jumped to the front ranks. Former NYU president John Sexton liked to say that his university was blessed by a spectacular “locational endowment” to compensate for its more meager financial one. These urban universities benefited immensely from the buzz and liveliness of their surrounding neighborhoods, which in turn propelled further gentrification, making some of them, like the area surrounding NYU, among the most desirable and expensive ZIP codes in the country.
The University of Pennsylvania was one of the first to see the potential in its urban location. In the 1990s, under the leadership of its president Judith Rodin and COO John Fry, Penn’s West Philadelphia Initiatives invested hundreds of millions of dollars in retail stores, a hotel and a public school, as well as encouraging university employees to buy homes in the neighborhood.
Today, as president of Philadelphia’s Drexel University, Mr. Fry is leading a multibillion-dollar effort to transform the Schuylkill rail yards into an urban innovation district. Many urban universities have followed the same playbook, including the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh, Ohio State in Columbus, Arizona State in Phoenix and Creighton in Omaha. In Los Angeles, USC built a new mixed-use district of residences and shops to attract students, and unleashed a major marketing campaign that set campus landmarks against a backdrop of downtown skyscrapers.
As the neighborhoods surrounding these colleges and universities improved, so did their rankings and application volumes. The schools’ bottom lines benefited as well: Moody’s Investors Services has been consistently bullish on urban institutions, even as it has generally been pessimistic about the higher education sector as a whole.
But now, the Covid-19 lockdown and its economic fallout threaten the fabric of urban life: restaurants and bars, arts and cultural activities, and the career opportunities that big cities offer. The impact of this shift is troubling not only for higher education but for cities themselves. In many places, universities play the critical role of “anchor institution,” serving as the largest employer and the most important driver of urban revival, thanks to the talent and high-tech innovation they attract. The crisis is likely to hit hardest at less well-endowed institutions in smaller and medium-size cities. The University of Akron, a key force in that Ohio city’s ongoing economic transformation, recently announced that it was eliminating six of its 11 colleges to cope with the budget crisis brought on by the pandemic.
For the next six to 18 months, urban universities must prepare for a painful period of adjustment as the country struggles to get the coronavirus under control. They will have to retrofit classrooms, residences and dining halls to allow students to return safely, just as cities must prepare their transit systems and office buildings.
Urbanization is a more powerful force than infectious disease, but urban universities have no such guarantee.
But crises, as difficult and wrenching as they can be, also offer opportunities. The ways that urban universities and their cities reinforce and need one another has never been more apparent. From the start of the pandemic, academic medical centers have been key in treating Covid-19 patients. Universities and cities can also work together to create new therapies and design healthier physical spaces.
Urban universities must also prepare for the possibility that campuses won’t be able reopen in the fall and consider alternatives. With many students likely to stay home for a semester or two, colleges and cities can work together to create AmeriCorps-like public service programs, enlisting students to battle the virus and rebuild their communities. The new consortia of states that are being created to manage the recovery are a perfect vehicle for mobilizing students who go to college in one state and live in another.
For those who would rather go back to college in the fall, urban institutions can craft a domestic version of a study-abroad program, where students spend a semester or two at rural colleges that are able to reopen. Such a network of institutions could help to address the urban-rural divide by sharing academic resources, exchanging students and faculty, attracting young talent to rural areas and strengthening smaller rural colleges and universities that are crucial anchors for their communities.
In the long run, our great cities will survive Covid-19, just as they have survived previous crises. Urbanization is a more powerful force than infectious disease. But urban universities have no such guarantee. What they do now will determine whether they can thrive, or even survive, in this challenging new chapter for urban America.
—Mr. Florida is a professor at the University of Toronto and a distinguished fellow at NYU’s Schack Institute of Real Estate. Mr. Selingo is former editor of the Chronicle of Higher Education and a special advisor and professor of practice at Arizona State University.
Academic institutions have driven the revival of many U.S. cities, but the pandemic is threatening the sources of their success.
By Richard Florida and Jeffrey Selingo
More than a month after the Covid-19 pandemic forced universities across the U.S. to shut down their campuses and quickly shift to online learning, many college officials are warning that they may not be able to reopen in the fall. Urban colleges and universities are particularly vulnerable.
More than half of the nation’s students attend college in metro areas with more than one million people. Today, greater New York City is the nation’s largest college town, with more than one million students, followed by Los Angeles with 950,000 and Chicago with 520,000. Indeed, Los Angeles is on par with famed college towns like Austin, Texas, with college students making up some 7% of its population.
This a relatively recent development, and urban universities are still more fragile than they might seem. Traditionally, higher education in America meant bucolic campuses nestled in small towns and rural areas. This is true not just of small liberal-arts colleges in New England, like Amherst, Williams and Middlebury, but also of many of the major state universities in the Midwest and Ivy League schools like Cornell and Dartmouth.
Not too long ago, urban universities such as New York University, the University of Southern California and Boston University had lackluster academic reputations. They also suffered from being located in what were perceived as higher-crime areas. Many of the neighborhoods surrounding these urban campuses were damaged by the misguided urban renewal strategies of the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s.
But as the back-to-the-city movement hit its stride in the late 1990s, urban universities were in vogue. Even those in smaller metro areas, like Brown University in Providence, R.I., jumped to the front ranks. Former NYU president John Sexton liked to say that his university was blessed by a spectacular “locational endowment” to compensate for its more meager financial one. These urban universities benefited immensely from the buzz and liveliness of their surrounding neighborhoods, which in turn propelled further gentrification, making some of them, like the area surrounding NYU, among the most desirable and expensive ZIP codes in the country.
The University of Pennsylvania was one of the first to see the potential in its urban location. In the 1990s, under the leadership of its president Judith Rodin and COO John Fry, Penn’s West Philadelphia Initiatives invested hundreds of millions of dollars in retail stores, a hotel and a public school, as well as encouraging university employees to buy homes in the neighborhood.
Today, as president of Philadelphia’s Drexel University, Mr. Fry is leading a multibillion-dollar effort to transform the Schuylkill rail yards into an urban innovation district. Many urban universities have followed the same playbook, including the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh, Ohio State in Columbus, Arizona State in Phoenix and Creighton in Omaha. In Los Angeles, USC built a new mixed-use district of residences and shops to attract students, and unleashed a major marketing campaign that set campus landmarks against a backdrop of downtown skyscrapers.
As the neighborhoods surrounding these colleges and universities improved, so did their rankings and application volumes. The schools’ bottom lines benefited as well: Moody’s Investors Services has been consistently bullish on urban institutions, even as it has generally been pessimistic about the higher education sector as a whole.
But now, the Covid-19 lockdown and its economic fallout threaten the fabric of urban life: restaurants and bars, arts and cultural activities, and the career opportunities that big cities offer. The impact of this shift is troubling not only for higher education but for cities themselves. In many places, universities play the critical role of “anchor institution,” serving as the largest employer and the most important driver of urban revival, thanks to the talent and high-tech innovation they attract. The crisis is likely to hit hardest at less well-endowed institutions in smaller and medium-size cities. The University of Akron, a key force in that Ohio city’s ongoing economic transformation, recently announced that it was eliminating six of its 11 colleges to cope with the budget crisis brought on by the pandemic.
For the next six to 18 months, urban universities must prepare for a painful period of adjustment as the country struggles to get the coronavirus under control. They will have to retrofit classrooms, residences and dining halls to allow students to return safely, just as cities must prepare their transit systems and office buildings.
Urbanization is a more powerful force than infectious disease, but urban universities have no such guarantee.
But crises, as difficult and wrenching as they can be, also offer opportunities. The ways that urban universities and their cities reinforce and need one another has never been more apparent. From the start of the pandemic, academic medical centers have been key in treating Covid-19 patients. Universities and cities can also work together to create new therapies and design healthier physical spaces.
Urban universities must also prepare for the possibility that campuses won’t be able reopen in the fall and consider alternatives. With many students likely to stay home for a semester or two, colleges and cities can work together to create AmeriCorps-like public service programs, enlisting students to battle the virus and rebuild their communities. The new consortia of states that are being created to manage the recovery are a perfect vehicle for mobilizing students who go to college in one state and live in another.
For those who would rather go back to college in the fall, urban institutions can craft a domestic version of a study-abroad program, where students spend a semester or two at rural colleges that are able to reopen. Such a network of institutions could help to address the urban-rural divide by sharing academic resources, exchanging students and faculty, attracting young talent to rural areas and strengthening smaller rural colleges and universities that are crucial anchors for their communities.
In the long run, our great cities will survive Covid-19, just as they have survived previous crises. Urbanization is a more powerful force than infectious disease. But urban universities have no such guarantee. What they do now will determine whether they can thrive, or even survive, in this challenging new chapter for urban America.
—Mr. Florida is a professor at the University of Toronto and a distinguished fellow at NYU’s Schack Institute of Real Estate. Mr. Selingo is former editor of the Chronicle of Higher Education and a special advisor and professor of practice at Arizona State University.
