Sunday, March 23, 2014

Sunday Globe Special: Seattle Satellite

"Northeastern, other colleges no longer bound by region" by Marcella Bombardieri | Globe Staff   March 22, 2014

SEATTLE — Across the street from Amazon headquarters, flanked by a prestigious biology institute on one side and a Filipino-Vietnamese food truck on the other, sitsa storefront in a booming biotech enclave of the city. The space is decked in red and white, with modernist lounge chairs and molecule-shaped sculptures suspended from the ceiling.

Welcome to Northeastern University Seattle. Yes, the once-humble commuter school along Huntington Avenue in Boston has a year-old satellite campus 3,000 miles away in the far Northwest corner of the country. It offers master’s degrees, mostly, that are either partially or entirely online and cater to people looking to get ahead in Seattle’s technology-fueled economy.

Northeastern also has a two-year-old satellite campus in Charlotte, N.C., and more in development — another on the West Coast, one in Canada, and one in Western Europe.

Along with Northeastern’s growing roster of online-only degrees, these faraway outposts represent a massive, and controversial, ambition on the part of the college and its president, Joseph E. Aoun, to serve the workforce, build the Northeastern brand, and position a formerly modest local institution for global competition.

Northeastern’s push is part of a small but growing trend among schools looking to make a bigger name for themselves and bring in new revenue as pressure mounts to contain the increase in undergraduate tuition. While American universities have been sprouting foreign campuses for years, some are now looking to other regions of the United States, despite the competition they face from established local institutions.

Emerson College formally opened a futuristic, $85 million academic and residential building in Hollywood this month.

How much was tuition increased this year, kids, and what debt load are you pulling?

While the Los Angeles site will cater primarily to traditional Emerson students on a semester away, the college also expects to reach out to Angelenos with a partially online master of fine arts program in creative writing and classes for professionals in such areas as entertainment law and social marketing.... 

Related(?): ESPN Rampant With Sexual Assaults?

That's when I walked out of the class.

--more--"

UPDATEPalestinian student group says it was singled out by Northeastern

Related: Intolerance in Newton 

And now the self-inflicted hate hoaxes have reached Northeastern.