Dive Summary:
- Beginning in January, Northeastern University's new extension campus in Seattle's South Lake Union neighborhood--part of a remote institution trend that has become popular with many institutions in recent years--will begin offering online graduate-level courses alongside face-to-face classes.
- Northeastern officials say it's no coincidence that the new campus is located across the street from Amazon's headquarters--they see a post-recession technology boom on the horizon in places like Seattle, and the city is in short supply when it comes to postgraduate science and technology workers.
- Seattle is home to companies like Boeing, Microsoft and the afore-mentioned Amazon, and economists say that the Great Recession intensified Seattle's concentration of the technology workers that Northeastern is looking for while also battering the University of Washington with years of budget cuts and tuition increases, which "froze a lot of people in place."
From the article:
With name tags clipped on and PowerPoint at the ready, officials from Northeastern University invited prospective students in one night last week for a peek at a new extension campus, 2,500 miles from the school’s home in Boston and about as far northwest as you can get in the lower 48 without swim fins. It is a trend that many colleges and universities have embraced in recent years — remote campuses to extend the brand and the flow of tuition checks. ...