U. of Pennsylvania
Scott Spitzer
The U. of Pennsylvania has had a significant impact on West Philadelphia. Among other gains, crime is down and business is up. But Penn’s impact on Philadelphia as a whole is much less clear.
A Powerful Player Changed a Neighborhood but Not a City
Beginning in the mid-1990s, the University of Pennsylvania decided to take on economic distress in its West Philadelphia neighborhood. Under the university’s stewardship, new retail space was added. Home prices in the area rose by more than $100,000. Crime fell. So highly regarded was Penn’s effort that the university’s then-president, Judith Rodin, wrote the book (The University and Urban Revival) on university-driven economic revitalization.
The turnaround, however, has never really taken hold beyond Penn’s immediate neighborhood. Philadelphia continues to lag behind its big-city peers in employment rates and job creation. Ms. Rodin and others say the university never set out to change the entire city but rather meant to focus on the area closest to campus. Still, Penn’s experience highlights the limits to universities’ economic intervention — even the dedication of a powerful, well-endowed, and well-intentioned institution may lead to only modest change.
Stanford U.
iStock
The prevailing story line is that Silicon Valley owes its existence to Stanford U. The reality, though, is more complex. “It was engagement,” says Enrico Moretti, “that made Stanford successful.”
A Key Ingredient, but One of Many, in Silicon Valley
Once a sleepy agricultural region, the area south of San Francisco is now synonymous with the high-tech boom. Silicon Valley’s birth can be traced back to a one-car garage in Palo Alto, where two young Stanford University graduates, William Hewlett and David Packard, invented the audio oscillator, critical to radios, telephones, and other electronic devices.
Like the founders of Hewlett-Packard, many of the key players in Silicon Valley’s rise had Stanford ties. Frederick Terman, a professor and one-time provost, mentored young scientists and engineers. Another member of the university’s faculty, Vinton Cerf, is viewed by many as the father of the Internet. But to give Stanford sole credit for the region’s renaissance is overly simplistic, economists say. The contributions of Stanford alumni and professors, they argue, were magnified because of the environment. Close and long-nurtured ties among the university, industry, and even the federal government helped create an ecosystem suited to innovation, creating a partnership even stronger than its parts.
U. of Rochester
Adam Fenster, Reuters, Landov
A statue of George Eastman, founder of Eastman Kodak, stands on the U. of Rochester campus. Digital photography sent Kodak into bankruptcy, and Rochester’s economy has yet to recover.
Research Alone Can’t Revive an Old-School Economy
A generation ago, upstate New York had an epicenter of innovation on the snow-ward side of Lake Ontario. Eastman Kodak, Bausch & Lomb, and Xerox were all headquartered in Rochester, helping fuel a vibrant economy.
But technology changed, and Rochester failed to keep pace. Its research strengths in optics and imaging were decidedly old-school, and its high-tech cluster was unable to pivot and reinvent itself as an engine for the 21st century.
The University of Rochester has since overtaken Kodak as the region’s largest employer. But despite its academic and research reputation, it hasn’t been able to fully replace the company as the area’s economic driver.
