Vanderbilt is expanding to New York City and possibly Florida, but Jeff worries it will just copy its expensive four-year degree model instead of offering cheaper apprenticeship programs. Michael says elite colleges want to grow while keeping their premium brand intact. Arizona State took a different path with low-cost expansion nationwide.
So, Jeff, Vanderbilt University splashed into the Wall Street Journal with an announcement that they are considering a New York City expansion. What's going on here? What does this say about where colleges are going?
You know, first of all, they're gonna have to get approved by the state of New York. I can imagine that many publics and privates, I can imagine like NYU might fight this for, for one thing, you know, the other thing that this is going to have is I think downward impact on those colleges in the Northeast. Because if I'm a, if I' achieving student in the Northeast and I just don't want to go to Nashville, but I want to get into a selective place, wouldn't it be great to go to New York? I guess the other thing here, Michael, that I'm a little disappointed about is that they're kind of just transferring their, you know, high cost model to New York. Right. Wouldn't it have been great if they said, oh yeah, we're going to go to New York and we can create like a media apprenticeship or a fashion apprenticeship and you know, we're going to give a certificate instead to students instead of, you know, having a four year, you know, very expensive degree in New York. What do you think?
Yeah, so it's a good point, Jeff, because I guess I've been framing for a long time we might see fewer colleges in the world, but I think that, you know, the rich get richer, they're going to serve many, many more students. Vanderbilt seems to be following this mold, not just New York City. They've also said that they're going to expand into Florida in all likelihood. And by the way, in the New York City, they're looking at taking over a campus of a college that's hemorrhaging money and so, you know, help everyone out there. I think what's interesting is this is not Arizona State expanding though. Right. Like they have been where truly we're bringing an accessible low cost model across country world. Even this Vanderbilt, still a high cost model to your point. That's not, I think, quite what we all imagined. So let's see where this all goes. But fascinating that they say, hey, our biggest alumni community, not actually in Tennessee, it's New York City. We want to be there. Yeah.
And I think, Michael, this just goes back to this idea of big brands, big fancy luxury brands like Hermes. Right. They have stores in every major city. Could we imagine that the biggest brands in higher ed, the luxury brands in higher ed are going to do the same thing? Let's wait and see.
