The challenge before town and gown leaders today is to build on the momentum and develop more strategic relationships across sectors to strengthen the region’s competitiveness and quality of life. The Seminar documented particularly promising campus-community quality of life partnerships at the neighborhood level. Many of these collaborations were painfully wrought after lengthy and grueling battles across neighborhood and campus fault lines, and they remain fragile.
Such collaborations require the ongoing nurture and support of local leaders not only for their own sake, but because they represent the building blocks of a new collaborative way in which Greater Boston is beginning to operate—a way that is critical to success in today’s world.
"Our challenge within academia is to shift toward actively working with community leaders for our mutual benefit. The challenge for local communities and civic officials is to move toward seeing such institutions as critical engines of regional development."
Richard M. Freeland, President, Northeastern University
As Northeastern University President Richard M. Freeland puts it, “The traditional paradigms of university-community relations have been overtaken by new realities for both colleges and universities and for the city. Our challenge within academia is to shift toward actively working with community leaders for our mutual benefit. The challenge for local communities and civic officials is to move toward seeing such institutions as critical engines of regional development. What is clear, of course, is that these twin paradigm shifts are the mirror image of each other. One can’t happen without the other.”
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The renovation of the Majestic Theater by Emerson College anchors the Midtown Cultural District.
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Kevin W. Fitzgerald, Sergeant-at-Arms of the Massachusetts General Court and a longtime neighborhood activist, observes that new examples of town-gown collaborations on historically thorny issues, such as facilities planning and off-campus housing, represent nothing less than an attempt to change history, habit, and culture. He points out that community leaders who in the past almost categorically fought to keep higher education institutions at bay now occasionally encourage an institution to venture into neighborhoods when a partnership opportunity is right. At the same time, the Seminar repeatedly encountered longtime residents still chafing at the past transgressions of colleges and universities that didn’t appropriately account for neighborhood concerns in facilities planning and other matters.
As one neighborhood activist put it: “We have a long way to go in educating universities and hospitals about the negative and destabilizing impacts of their growth on abutting residential communities and working collectively as a matter of course to determine significant positive economic fallout for the impacted neighborhoods.”
While problems still remain, colleges and universities today by and large incorporate neighborhood input in their planning as a matter of course. Indeed, the Seminar found unprecedented commitment and progress across sectors to address historic town-gown tensions through new partnerships and policies. One policy of special note is the City of Boston’s new institutional master plan process by which most colleges and universities must work with the city and with a city-appointed community-based advisory group to create plans for campus development and expansion that both meet institutional needs and pay appropriate attention to the concerns of the city and of surrounding communities. This new process replaces a tradition in which universities and colleges developed their plans for physical expansion through internal processes and shared them with the public through a “public comment period” only after they were relatively complete. The new process brings the city and community into institutional planning at a much earlier stage than has traditionally been the case and thus creates the possibility for a truly collaborative approach to campus development. At the same time, the new process offers academic institutions an opportunity to define their commitments to the community for an extended period of time through a single comprehensive process rather than negotiating such contributions and approval-by-approval.
Ultimately, the Seminar anticipates that this process will act as a catalyst for neighborhood development partnerships such as One Brigham Circle, a partnership among Harvard University’s School of Medicine, Partners Healthcare, New Boston Fund, Inc., NDC Development Associates, Inc., Mission Hill Neighborhood Housing Services and the Mission Hill community. This partnership has revitalized a major intersection at the crossroads of leading teaching hospitals and vibrant neighborhoods. The Seminar also hopes the new master plan process is as effective in Boston as it has been in other cities in deterring local officials from asking colleges and universities for major concessions for every development proposal.
The region’s competitive positioning is at stake. The Seminar found that competitor regions across the country—and the world—are aggressively organizing to create and implement new higher education-civic strategies. Philadelphia leaders recently launched a Knowledge Industry Partnership designed to brand that region as a hub for the knowledge economy. While Greater Boston is already blessed with such a distinction, the region should not rest on its laurels or fall prey to nagging town-gown conflicts. The Seminar recognizes the complexity of conflicts, such as issues related to tax-exemption, but suggests that local leaders favor the larger economic growth and quality of life partnerships while these important issues are being considered.
While the Seminar tracked promising trends of increasing education-civic partnerships, including a wealth of quality of life, economic development and civic leadership partnerships, it discovered a dearth of industry-wide strategies for such collaborations. The higher education sector has done an intermittent job at best in promoting its impact and the new ways in which it incorporates community input in its planning and operations. As a high ranking MIT official told the authors of the “Boston Unbound” report by the Citistates group: “We have lots of community-oriented programs and efforts…but no strategy.”
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| Harvard Medical School |
Simply put, the relationships between local colleges and universities and their host communities must be seriously reconsidered. It is time to recognize the stake that higher education has in the region and the stake the region has in higher education. Today, civic leaders are inviting higher education leaders to play a more active civic role in the life of the community—and as a result Greater Boston has an exciting opportunity to build on a momentum already established. Since the region is considered to be a gold standard for higher education in this country and around the world, it should lead the way in forging partnerships across the higher education, business, government, and civic sectors.
The Seminar found a collective desire on the part of all parties to continue to move beyond historic town-gown tensions. There is a sense that the new way of doing business through partnerships is already working, but at the same time there is an urgent need and a collective opportunity to accelerate this trend and strategically link university resources to community needs, while at the same time creatively managing inevitable conflicts. Most leaders interviewed by the Seminar felt that the region cannot afford to be distracted by the residual acrimony of the past and are eager to leave that era of conflict behind.
A great deal of the Seminar’s process focused on identifying those university resources and emerging cross-sector partnerships. Here is a summary of the major ways in which local colleges and universities have an impact on the region:
Stimulating Social Progress through Civic Leadership
The region’s pursuit of higher learning has played an historic and major role in building a progressive and enlightened society. Today, increasingly, politicians and other civic leaders are looking to higher education for economic and civic leadership in an effort to fill the void left by corporate mergers and acquisitions. College and university presidents are answering the call and working with local leaders on innovative approaches to timeworn conflicts. New campus-based institutes and think tanks are informing and influencing local policy and practice. College and university presidents are increasingly participating in civic dialog and initiatives to improve local competitiveness positioning.
The region’s preeminence as a center for higher education is due in large part to a dynamic mix of private and public institutions, with public institutions playing a particularly critical role in preparing the workforce of the future. But competitor states with a similar mix of public and private universities are making many more significant investments in public higher education. A recent Mass Insight/Battelle study found that Massachusetts’ public university research base is half the size of those in New York, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, all of which have similarly strong private university research bases. Moreover, in the last three years, Massachusetts fell from 9th in the nation to 34th in higher education spending per student.
Enhancing Local Quality of Life
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| Local colleges provide resources and support to K-12 education. |
The past decade has witnessed an explosive growth in partnerships between higher education and community—alliances that advance the quality of life for all residents. As outlined below, colleges are marshalling their institutional and human assets to strengthen local education, health, housing and a myriad of other social indicators. The region’s 75 colleges and universities educate some 265,000 students annually. Nearly 70% of Boston Public School graduates attend postsecondary programs in the Boston region. Over the past 20 years, local colleges and universities awarded more than $150 million in scholarships to Boston Public School graduates from their own funds. The eight major research universities alone provide continuing education programs to 25,000 adults per semester. Local colleges and universities provide institutional resources and facilitate volunteerism in support of local K-12 programs promoting college readiness, cultural enrichment, after-school activities, and literacy, as well as school system support and teacher training. One out of every four volunteers in the Boston Public Schools is a local college student.
Strengthening Vibrant Communities
Over the past 10 years, there has been a 75% increase in the number of campus-based public service programs. The average percentage of students involved in service on college campuses statewide grew from 10% to 36% while the estimated number of hours students contribute to service on campuses grew from 20,000 to 350,000 annually. Students assist neighborhoods and community members in countless ways, from helping them to meet basic food, clothing, and shelter needs, to advising them in new business creation. Through the Bentley College Service-Learning Center, for instance, 750 students volunteer with local organizations every year. Similarly, some 400 Babson College first-year students participate in community service activities as part of that school’s Foundation Management Experience program.
Bettering the Region’s Health
Greater Boston boasts one of the leading health care sectors in the world due largely to its affiliation with nearby higher education clusters. Boston is the only region to feature two hospital centers listed in U.S. News & World Report’s 2004 honor roll – Massachusetts General Hospital (3rd) and Brigham and Women’s Hospital (12th) – both Harvard affiliated. Several area hospitals are nationally ranked in a wide range of specialties, and the top five federally funded teaching hospitals are located in Boston. Another Harvard affiliated hospital, Beth Israel/Deaconess Medical Center, has a cancer program that was one of only 34 in the country to receive the Outstanding Achievement Award from the Commission on Cancer. Boston Medical Center, the primary teaching affiliate for Boston University’s School of Medicine, has the largest 24-hour Level I trauma center in Boston, with more than 90,000 emergency visits last year. Emphasizing community-based care, Boston Medical Center, with its mission to provide consistently accessible health services to all, is the largest safety net hospital in New England and was recently named one of the top 15 major teaching hospitals in the country by Solucient. The region’s colleges and universities host a range of programs that advance local health, public safety, and the environment.
Building Housing and a Sense of Place
Between 1990 and 2002, area colleges added 16,324 new student beds, the equivalent of 2,600 apartments, in part to help alleviate the local housing crisis and address town-gown concerns. Schools like Emerson College, which has invested nearly $170 million in the Midtown Cultural District, are helping to revitalize individual neighborhoods. Colleges and universities are working hand in glove with the City of Boston on a new Institutional Master Plan process designed to better integrate and respond to neighborhood and citywide input.
Enhancing Public Safety
College and university police departments partner with municipal and state forces in patrolling local communities and in fighting and deterring crime. Academic institutions pursue proactive partnerships, such as Operation Student Shield, with local police and community groups. Students participate in safety-related public service efforts in areas such as violence prevention.
Providing Cultural and Recreational Opportunities
Local colleges and universities offer multiple arts, music, cultural and sporting opportunities to the public and nurture new talent that often becomes part of the local scene. There are at least 11 area colleges exclusively devoted to one or more branches of the visual or performing arts. Many of these institutions house film centers and museums, and host concerts, plays and dance productions. Institutions of higher learning also partner with local community groups in promoting the arts. One example involves six area colleges (Berklee College of Music, the Boston Architectural Center, The Boston Conservatory, Emerson College, Massachusetts College of Art, and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts), all founding members of the Pro Arts Consortium. In 1998, after 14 years of planning and lobbying, the Pro Arts Consortium became the founding sponsor of the Boston Arts Academy, the City of Boston’s first pilot high school for the visual and performing arts. The Academy acts as a laboratory for developing “best practices” in urban arts education, and has won numerous awards for its innovative programs.
Anchoring the Innovative Economy
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| The new Merck building on the Emmanuel College campus. |
Boston’s historic prosperity is due in part to its educational prominence. The eight major universities alone have an economic impact totaling more than $7 billion. Higher education is increasingly recognized as a major sector in its own right—one that helps to develop other leading sectors like health care and biotechnology. Area universities and their affiliated hospitals represent more than one-third of the state’s largest 25 employers. Leading local companies like Boston Scientific, EMC, and Analog Devices were founded by graduates of local colleges. Major companies like Novartis and Merck are moving to Boston to be closer to its higher education clusters. The region’s concentration of knowledge networks rooted in higher education attracts numerous workers to the region.
Colleges and universities are also major corporations in their own right. The region’s 75 colleges and universities employ more than 50,000 faculty and staff. The eight major research universities alone spend nearly $3.9 billion annually on payroll, purchasing, and construction. They receive $1.5 billion in research funds and their affiliated hospitals and research centers attract an additional $1 billion. The Boston area’s colleges and universities help to train the local workforce beyond degree programs through a wide range of community outreach efforts. Students at the eight major institutions alone spend about $850 million, and visitors an additional $250 million.
Shaping the Region’s Identity
The region contains the country’s greatest concentration of highly acclaimed colleges and universities as reflected in U.S. News rankings. Forty percent of the Boston region’s residents hold a college degree, almost twice the national average. Local institutions have educated a number of the world’s current and past leaders. Many of the region’s colleges are located in urban areas, and students, faculty, and staff provide vitality to a new urbanity that is sweeping the region. The more than 2,000 buildings on local college and university campuses help to define the local landscape and the built environment.
Major Recommendation
The Goldberg Seminar recommends that all sectors of Greater Boston—higher education, government, business, civic, and philanthropic—build on the dramatic upsurge in university-community collaboration by addressing critical civic challenges through joint initiatives. The most pressing and promising opportunities for collective action relate to:
● Strengthening talent retention and workforce development;
● Increasing housing availability and affordability; and
● Promoting higher education diversity and access.
Effective action on these critical challenges requires bringing together the combined resources and energies of higher education, government, business, civic organizations and foundations—building on significant work that already has been accomplished through university-community collaborations. These and other pressing issues will require all sectors—including higher education—to intensify their commitment to higher education-community partnerships and develop and consistently use best practices.
Specifically, the Seminar proposes the formation of a new Boston Metropolitan Alliance of College and University Presidents. Throughout its committee meetings, the Seminar heard calls for organized vehicles to accelerate higher education-civic partnerships and offer a strategic approach to connecting currently disconnected partnerships. One labor leader spoke to the need for a “more concrete structure.” The region boasts a number of higher education consortia that advance certain segments of the sector or focus on specific issues but there is no organization whose singular mission is to promote the interests of both public and private colleges and universities in the region and strengthen their partnerships as a collective with business, government, and civic stakeholders.
The emergence of new town-gown collaborations throughout the region paves the way for such an Alliance. An Alliance could amplify partnership efforts and accelerate the application of both local and national best practices across the area in a more coordinated and strategic way. Neighborhood groups and individual colleges could benefit from a wider airing of success stories in community-campus collaborations to inform their work.
“Relationships between civic organizations and institutions of higher education abound, although most exist in one-to-one relationships that are primarily informal. Greater impact could occur if these types of relationships both expand and coordinate around common issues of concern…”
Thomas P. Glynn, COO,
Partners Health Care
The ultimate goal of the Alliance is to leverage higher education-civic partnerships. Partners COO and Steering Committee member Thomas P. Glynn observed, “Relationships between civic organizations and institutions of higher education abound, although most exist in one-to-one relationships that are primarily informal. Greater impact could occur if these types of relationships both expand and coordinate around common issues of concern…”
The Alliance model is informed by similar efforts in a growing number of U.S. competitor regions, as well as similar endeavors in other local sectors. The Colleges of Worcester Consortium (COWC), for instance, strengthens ties between local colleges, and a new effort, the Worcester UniverCity Partnership, coalesces academic, business, and government leaders in pursuit of local economic development. The Seminar believes that creating a local higher education Alliance analogous to business associations, such as the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, and emerging public sector counterparts, such as the Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC) and the Metropolitan Mayors Coalition (MMC), is a critical step in forming new strategic partnerships across sectors. The Alliance would work with, and reinforce, the important continuing leadership of consortia that focus on specific issues— including the Boston Higher Education Partnership , the Massachusetts Campus Compact, and the Boston Consortium for Higher Education.
The Boston Metropolitan Alliance of College and University Presidents would:
1. Promote the visibility and impact of the higher education sector on the region and advance the collective agenda of member institutions. The Alliance would solidify the emerging recognition that local businesses, government and civic leaders have an obligation to help academic institutions flourish. One possibility would be to organize an annual summit co-sponsored with sister organizations such as the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, MAPC, and MMC. The Seminar recommends that an initial summit feature presentations on the competitive positioning of the local higher education industry and identify its competitive needs to business, government, and civic leaders in the hope of formulating new shared strategies and approaches. It is anticipated that bringing stakeholders from across sectors together in this manner will yield new opportunities for strategic partnerships. For example, after improving dialog with local neighbors, the University of Pennsylvania created a “Buy West Philadelphia” program that over a 14-year period increased university purchasing in immediate neighborhoods from $1 million to $57 million.
2. Facilitate civic building and economic development partnerships across colleges and universities and with local business, government, and civic institutions. The Alliance could take joint action in the support of local business, government, and civic agendas, such as exploring the possibility of helping to free the City of Boston and other municipalities of their state-imposed over-reliance on property taxes. A central purpose of the Alliance would be to facilitate an exchange of best practices in higher education-civic partnerships in support of neighborhood, community, campus, and other groups seeking to strengthen collaborations or relationships to improve the quality of life, physical planning and other concerns. The Alliance would also help to leverage support for existing regional higher education associations that focus on specific issue areas and to solicit those sectors’ support in advance of its own agenda.
3. Work with individual universities and colleges and civic authorities to promote a new approach to campus-community interactions based on a spirit of partnership and planned, strategic engagement. The Seminar’s hope in recommending the Alliance is not only to create a new framework for constructive interaction between universities and colleges as a collectivity and the city and region of which they are a vital part, but to promote a new spirit of partnership between individual institutions of higher education and the civic authorities with whom they interact on an ongoing basis. The Seminar sees great promise in the institutional master planning process created by the Boston Redevelopment Authority, through which universities and colleges work with the City and with community groups to develop multiyear plans for institutional development that also include specific institutional commitments to community betterment. The Seminar applauds Mayor Menino and the BRA for this initiative and encourages the new Alliance to consider adopting it as the model for all planning for physical development by the region’s academic institutions. It appears to offer an approach far superior to the tradition of ad hoc, project-by-project, approval-by-approval processes of negotiation that have traditionally characterized these kinds of discussions. The new master planning process is still in its pilot phase, however, and it may well be the case that additional refinements or even alternatives need to be considered. Given that, the new Alliance is charged with devoting attention to this matter in the spirit of defining—in collaboration with municipalities—a “best practice” approach to institutional planning for physical development that could frame these interactions for all participants in the process.
Above all, the Seminar envisions the Alliance helping to frame the future of town-gown relationships in the world’s preeminent college town. Given the rise of the knowledge economy and ascendant college-community partnership models, there appears to be a need for a wide public discussion on the importance of thriving higher education institutions and their adjoining neighborhoods, as well as a strategic discussion on how to build upon momentum in tapping the assets of the region’s academic institutions in a productive and mutually beneficial way.
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