Stanford Pulls Bid for New York Tech Campus

http://www.betabeat.com/2011/12/16/breaking-stanford-pulls-bid-for-new-york-tech-campus/

by flahertyiv • 15 years ago

69 49 15 years ago

untog• 15 years ago

Surprising, given the amount of time it's taken to get to this point.

As a New Yorker myself, I'm not sure what I should think of it. Someone is going to make a campus, be it Cornell or NYU.

geogra4• 15 years ago

Why not Columbia?

chimeracoder• 15 years ago

Why not Columbia, indeed? As pointed out elsewhere in this thread, let's not forget where the Manhattan Project - an project that spanned multiple countries - got its name!

Columbia's always been a top-tier research institution - in fact, it has more Nobel laureates than any other university in the world. As far as computer science is concerned, let's not forget that a number of great achievements in tech & computer science (past and present) are the work of people who are or were in some way affiliated with Columbia. I can't find a comprehensive list at the moment - unfortunately the Columbia CS department website doesn't brag about itself enough for that - but it's not too hard to think of examples.

Columbia already has an engineering school (the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Sciences). The school is known for the strength of its graduate and undergraduate programs - its selectivity rate for undergraduate admissions, for what it's worth, is lower than any other school in the country except MIT.

Is there room for improvement? Absolutely - I can think of a number of ways. But the tech scene in New York is young and looking to grow quickly. It makes more sense to me to take advantage of the tremendous resources already here and amp them up, rather than start from scratch.

Unfortunately, for reasons that are more political than they are logical, I'd be surprised if Columbia actually won this contest. But it would be a pleasant surprise, knowing that they made the right decision.

cuoswj• 15 years ago

Because they're already building a new campus in West Harlem. Bloomberg's competition would just add more goodies.

pantaloons• 15 years ago

Surprising indeed. It seems strange that they would take the proposal this far before withdrawing for financial reasons, or fear of losing.

Surely there is a more interesting bone of contention here that didn't become evident until late in the process.

dman• 15 years ago

Maybe the data from the online courses came in during the meantime and Stanford realised that they could grow the university exponentially without opening new campuses?

_delirium• 15 years ago

Doesn't NYU already have a "New York tech campus", since the merger with Brooklyn Poly and its subsequent rebranding as NYU's engineering school?

100k• 15 years ago

Too bad. I thought the Roosevelt Island renderings looked pretty cool.

steventruong• 15 years ago

Maybe now Stanford and MIT can consider a merger ^_~ j/k

rayiner2• 15 years ago

Sad. It would be refreshing to get some west-coast culture to NYC.

simonsarris• 15 years ago

I ask sincerely, what is west-coast culture?

(I have lived in New Hampshire all my life.)

rayiner2• 15 years ago

The stereotypical San Franciscan gets up at 7am, wears business-casual to work, and his or her hobbies include biking and wine/food. The stereotypical New Yorker gets up at 9am, wears a suit to work, and his or her hobbies include alcoholism and chain smoking.

I'm joking, but only kind of. I spent this summer working in both NYC and the Bay area and it was like a night and day difference. NYC is so much more hierarchical, image conscious and anxiously intense.

leot3• 15 years ago

As someone who grew up on the east coast and migrated here for grad school, I have noticed that west-coast culture tends to be less judgmental, more free spirited, and more novelty-seeking.

Homunculiheaded• 15 years ago

I grew up in the north east and then relocated to the west. Almost without fail when I met someone new on the East Coast (especially NE), one of the first questions they would always ask is "where are you from?" I cannot recall ever being asked that as part of an introduction while I've lived out west.

In my experience there is a lot of focus in the northeast on where you come from, and what your background is. I've found out west (and I'm not even in the bay area) there's a lot more focus on where you want to go and what you can do.

And I think related to this, I've generally found people to be much more open and friendly. People are generally much more willing to let you into their social worlds than on the east coast.

ArbitraryLimits2• 15 years ago

Here's my favorite example of how it's not really so different, at least among status-conscious people:

I live in California and work with someone who recently moved here from Baltimore. He's kind of an older gen-X guy, and he likes to go to thrift stores, buy old suits for < $10 and wear them ironically, like with dress shoes but ankle-length white socks and the sleeves pushed up, and the front end of the tie shorter than the back end.

Every few months, a manager will pull him aside and say in a trying-to-be-friendly way, "You know, you really don't have to wear a suit around here." To which he'll respond, "Yeah, I know, it's just my thing, man." And then there manager will stare at him a little harder and say something along the lines of, "No, I mean you really don't have to wear a suit around here." Eventually the manager gives up and writes him off as an incorrigible free spirit.

TL;DR The West Coast is a place where you can wear whatever you want to work, as long as it's a Hawaiian shirt.

spodek• 15 years ago

In my recent two-day visit to California from New York City I drove more than in the previous ten years, cumulatively.

listerhome2• 15 years ago

The State of New York has a notoriously dysfunctional state government run by a tiny cabal of powerful, albeit corrupt, legislators. The State of California has a notoriously dysfunctional state government run by the Californians.

droithomme4• 15 years ago

"we’re not exactly chomping at the bit to see New York squander its funding on students who spend their time building Star Wars simulations"

So, a New York based venture capitalist booster says that Stanford engineering students are "not tapped into the current tech scene", and ridicules that they know how to built robots.

Fascinating.

kenjackson• 15 years ago

Is that in the story? I can't find it.

citadrianne• 15 years ago

It's in this story, http://www.betabeat.com/2011/07/18/stanford-students-dont-wa..., which was linked.

RockyMcNuts• 15 years ago

read it as a light-hearted dig, with a funny video of light saber fighting robots... touchy touchy

brudgers• 15 years ago

Personally, I thought it a bit of an odd idea based on the large geographic and cultural distances between Palo Alto and NYC. It just didn't seem like the right ecosystem for a transplant. On the east coast, even Boston would seem better suited from a cultural standpoint - there is much more of a public emphasis on technology.

jpdoctor• 15 years ago

The Manhattan Project was so named because of Columbia's involvement. Yet somehow NYC never landed the geek culture, almost as if it is squeezed out by squishier disciplines.

Good call Stanford.

forgotAgain• 15 years ago

I really don't see Bloomberg standing on stage announcing a choice with anyone else but Stanford. He would consider it a personal failure and embarrassment. The project is basically dead at it's original scope. Maybe something much smaller will be announced but it will be low key and with a deputy mayor filling in.

Erwin• 15 years ago

Fun fact: Stanford President Hennessy is the same Hennessy who with Patterson wrote that great computer architecture book: Computer Organization & Design: The Hardware/Software Interface. Oh, he also co-founded MIPS

Although as my first job was doing MIPS related stuff I may be biased about usefulness of the book. Amusingly the first featured 5-star review on Amazon is from John Mashey whom older readers may remember from comp.arch on Usenet.

whiletrue• 15 years ago

I have that book!

GuiA• 15 years ago

So does pretty much anyone who has taken a decent computer arch course :)

csmajorfive• 15 years ago

Cornell received a $350M gift to build their campus. It looks like Stanford withdrew in response.

Source: http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/16/stanford-drops-...

west1737• 15 years ago

That's good, I never thought Stanford made sense as a choice for NYC. Don't get me wrong, Stanford is an exceptional school, with great tech credentials, and has spawned a unique startup environment.

But the thing that makes the SF area great for startups is the proximity (and thus density) of startups and tech in general. While long-distance networking has come a long way, it's still no replacement. If NYC's goal is to build a stronger tech community, I think they're better off building their own East Coast tech culture vs. trying to import a culture from SF.

Disclosure: as a Cornell grad, I'm definitely biased and psyched about it getting more involved in supporting a tech community (a $350M donation didn't hurt either)

ChristianMarks• 15 years ago

Someone offered a $350,000,000 gift to Cornell, at which point Stanford decided to drop out.

BadassFractal• 15 years ago

It's interesting how schools expand their reach to the other coast. CMU has a SV branch and Wharton has SF.

Stanford Pulls Bid for New York Tech Campus

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