Stanford Wants New Grad School in New York

Universities already set up satellite campuses around the country and in other parts of the world, but Stanford has plans on a grander scale. The private university in Palo Alto wants to set up a new graduate school in New York City focused on science and technology.

The interest was sparked late last year when New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that the city’s economic development corporation had an interest in attracting a world-class university to locate in one of the five boroughs.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Stanford is one of 27 universities hoping to come to terms with the city on setting up a new school, and it has already identified Manhattan as its ideal location. Whichever school the city selects will receive “a significant capital contribution toward the campus,” a city official is quoted as saying in the report..

“The time is coming for universities to be in more than one location,” Stanford President John Hennessy told the school’s senate in February. “The university that figures out how to do it, and not just the way we currently have centers in Washington, D.C., or in other countries, but to really be operating in more than one location, that day is coming. The institution that figures out how to do that, and how to make it work well, will be in a significantly advantaged position.”

If Stanford gets the nod, it would begin construction by 2013 and 450 masters and doctoral students would be able to enroll just two years later.