Dive Brief:
- The preponderance of research universities located in Pittsburgh, including Carnegie Mellon University, are helping to lead to a tech boom in the city, with companies like Facebook, Apple and Google opening offices in the city in order to be close to the university, along with a growing number of talented alumni and distinguished professors, according to Ed Tech Magazine.
- Carnegie Mellon University recently helped to bring Uber to Pittsburgh to serve as a testing ground for automated vehicles, potentially offering the state a burgeoning new industry. Students and alumni well-versed in tech are noting that people are moving from around the world to Pittsburgh in order to find work.
- Other partnerships include the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center's work with Microsoft to help combine the work the latter has done with artificial intelligence with the research capabilities available at a sterling research university.
Dive Insight:
Colleges and universities in and around Pittsburgh can tout their immediate and substantive contribution to the economic health and expansion of the state to argue to legislators that additional funding is needed to maintain and even expand those successful results. The University of Pittsburgh can rightly argue partnerships like the one forged with Microsoft will continue to pay dividends for the state in the years to come; higher ed funding can be framed as an essential regional economic investment. Not only that, but the influx of tech companies to the city can be leveraged as a recruiting advantage, particularly if the universities find ways to forge partnerships to provide experiential learning opportunities to students before graduation.