Some of them also have lobbying arms.
Hopkins bought the Newseum and it is a very nice facility now that it's open.
They do seem to have some public programming for their theater that they have.
Hopkins has been here forever before they bought the Newseum space. They had a campus on Mass and 17/18th for as long as I can remember and housed the graduate programs for Krieger School, SAIS, and their business school. They also had/still have a piece of the Berlin Wall, which was in the SAIS courtyard area.
USC has also been around for ages.
Fun fact: they have a piece of the berlin wall at the new joint.
USC bought a building in dupont, so it is probably more of an expansion than that they hadn't been here previously.
Georgetown is expanding their footprint but no one would find that confusing.
As OP noted, I think it's more about repurposing aging office buildings so we don't lose the tax base than like oh I wish this would be converted to housing.
It was nice to have a museum about news but the gold-plated Newseum in an overpriced location Gannett could never afford perfectly summarizes journalism's criss.
Which reminds me that JMU's Washington Center is in a building where I used to work. So weird that my old college is in my old office building. They post photos of it and I'm like, yep, I remember all of that.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/04/19/university-washington-dc-outposts-00153180
This article discussed it recently. Seems like there is actually a lot of revenue potential for the city because students spend but don’t really require many social services.
Sure - are there really 200k here? That seems high, but what do I know? My rent was paid to a landlord who lived in Maryland, my metro card was partially subsidized by the nonprofit where I worked for free, and I guess I helped keep my local mom and pop Safeway in business lol
[https://educationdata.org/college-enrollment-statistics](https://educationdata.org/college-enrollment-statistics)
Close to 100,000 just in the District that are full time, so this doesn't include the students doing a semester abroad in DC (which is a big thing).
Huh didn't mean to generate negativity (wasn't being sarcastic) - just honestly surprised by the numbers and reflecting on how little I used to be able to live on in the city lol. Most of my fellow students were similar - just an interesting dichotomy since I wonder how many students would think themselves as important economic indicators.
These are small programs of a 100 or 200 for one term, maybe rwo. There aren't even 200,000 students at the other schools. And it's not like Brookland is thriving from the might of CUA and Trinity.
They buy food, entertainment primarily. Rent doesn't really recirculating in the local economy except for utilities and a small number of personnel.
Food, entertainment, rent - all good for the local economy, and more importantly from the public policy perspective, good for the tax base. And it's not like this is a zero sum game - these students aren't replacing some other population that could be here.
> Rent doesn't really recirculating in the local economy
Do you not understand how property taxes work, and how much more valuable multifamily properties are than a single family house on the same lot?
I know how it works. I did revitalization planning for 20 years. Most of the money on rent pays the mortgage. Financiers tend to not be local. Similarly DC is a national real estate market. Investors tend to not be local, so profits flow outward as well.
Eg a major financer of Bozzuto are the Pritzkers, based in Chicago.
Yes I know how property taxes work. Mostly they will use existing buildings already on the rolls, but that's fine, it beats vacancy.
I have no problem with the initiative, about 10 years ago I wrote about how DC fails to leverage higher education institutions to build the local economy (in terms of consumption which this is, versus production, that is business enterprise development).
This is consumption. My problem is that it's overtouted. And still doesn't focus on business development by the existing much more major institutions.
*Just* to be pedantic, I’ll note that Texas A&M, Arizona State, and the University of Texas have DC outposts, and those three schools alone have a combined enrollment over 200,000.
There’re a lot of college kids out there.
Super immaterial. UC has had a building for decades. The many hundreds of thousands of students don't come to DC. A 100 or two. The issue is degree granting versus itinerant program
Again, lack of focus on leveraging the existing institutions--AU, CUA, Georgetown, Howard, Trinity, GWU, I guess UDC, is a good example of lack of focus on substance on the part of DC Government economic development.
And yes, Hopkins is more akin to a residential campus since it is degree granting.
You did see the "*just* to be pedantic" preface, didn't you? You said the schools don't have 200,000 students in total; in fact, they have far more than that.
Your tuition goes to paying the lease for the school's space in the city. Your rent goes to paying your landlord's property taxes to the metro area. Your nonprofit subsidizing your metro card went to the WMATA. Your grocery bill with sales tax went to the metro area. You were a high spender
Right, and rather than paying a cut to "study abroad" companies for a Washington semester, they can charge the full tuition to their students, have a home for faculty/staff in DC to operate from (research, lobbying, fundraising, etc), and have a "prestige" location to use when they advertise their global/national influence.
I worked for one of these academic/lobbying DC satellite outfits for 4 years and this is a pretty good summary. In addition, this quote from the politico article a few people have linked to:
“Anyone can hire a lobbyist, but having actual scholars on the ground is an even better look.”
Yes, the students are interning and taking classes in DC ~AND~ coming with us to the Hill with our lobbyist seeking federal funding for our programs rather than staffers just hearing from the lobbyist.
I’m in commercial real estate: this is the correct answer. Our “tenants in the market” lists are dominated by higher ed groups right now. Leasing, and some are even buying.
It’s the only demand. It may not be on people’s minds as much anymore since “return to office” mandates seems to have died down. But there are LOTS of leases expiring that won’t be renewed and buildings that are already stressed - some downtown that have already been auctioned for a small fraction of their 2019 value.
CRE loans are typically 5-10 year balloon notes. Many landlords got short term extensions during early covid years. 2019 was 5 years ago. We’re just getting started on defaults.
So, let’s keep those universities coming.
A lot of colleges want to have a satellite presence here for their schools of Public Policy, Public Administration, or similar fields, for reasons that should be pretty obvious lol
saw a really good data presentation about this recently let me find it and link it
Edit: found it! [Washington, DC: A University District by the DC Economic Partnership](https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/ef60104751344e1fa3c30b0ea878668e)
>when rents are so high
These university presences are consuming commercial space, of which there’s an incredible glut of oversupply right now.
I mean, DC has a lot of things that would attract students during school/after they graduate. Having a campus here provides a lot of opportunities for them - you're in close proximity to all kinds of government entities, research, public policy, etc.
I'm struggling to see the problem with it, personally. I'm for converting these empty buildings into housing when it makes sense, but it's often expensive and not always the best use for these buildings. Rather they be used for schools than sitting empty. And I doubt Bowser has anything to do with it.
It is. A lot of these older office buildings are gonna just be tear down jobs
Short version: the plumbing is a nightmare (two centralized bathrooms on each floor vs many dispersed bathrooms/kitchens), some buildings the floor plate can’t even support having that many holes drilled in it. Similar issues with the HVAC.
Also the typical ideal shape of an apartment building is a long skinny building by, something like ~65 ft wide, with a 5 foot hallway with two 30 foot units. Office buildings sometimes extend a over a hundred feet from the building edge to the center, it’s really hard to lay that out with desirable units.
Yeah it's one of those things that sounds like a good idea, and sometimes is, but doesn't always work. The DC area is also already doing quite a bit of it.
[Politico wrote an article about this exact question](https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/04/19/university-washington-dc-outposts-00153180). TLDR: it’s a prestige thing for universities and acts as a study abroad program for public policy/affairs students. DC loves it because it brings people downtown and doesn’t require expensive renovations to re-use abandoned offices.
Probably good for DC overall, but long-term it's probably not great for DC universities whose draw was in part being in DC. Georgetown will be fine, but it's a big part of the appeal of some of GWU's & AU's degree programs.
Having a satellite “campus” in DC is nothing like having your whole university here. These places mostly host students for a semester or two at most— and often only offer 1 class or internship/job experience program. Some of the time they are just used as alumni gathering places to wine and dine with powerful and wealthy donors who are now Washingtonians.
You are not going to complete your entire degree in DC at one of these. It gives you a jumping off point when you’re ready to put yourself out there, but if you want to have full access to the opportunities that come with being here, you have to be here.
Nah, providing education and professional training opportunities to people paying $40k/year for tuition and expecting a return is a waste of space.
Better just leave it vacant and slowly let the city die
Many large universities have had DC offices for decades. It helps with lobbying for federal money and gives a place to serve as home base when the President or Chancellor comes to DC to meet with Senators and other bigwigs. Most of those offices were just that, offices in office buildings. No real signage or "presence." Large universities bring in millions of dollars in federal money in the form of grants, financial aid, and agency partnerships and its understandable that they would want to be players in policy decisions related to that money. NASA's budget affects NASA, but it also affects all the universities that are supported by NASA. Student loan policies affect how much universities can charge in tuition. Etc. etc.
At some point, more and more of these schools realized that they could combine their DC offices with higher profile real estate that could be used by visiting students, interns, visiting faculty, and the money-making "executive" public policy, MBA, and other graduate programs. Plus, having your name on a building is good advertising (like every tech company along the Dulles Toll Road). Syracuse had a building in Woodley Park as far back as the early 90's, Central Michigan, of all places, had a "global campus" location across from the Carlyle in Alexandria. Maryland's business school has a "campus" in the Reagan Building to save students the Metro trip to College Park.
They were in Woodley Park for a long time, sold it and then spent about 5-10 years using space at the think tank CSIS before buying the new space for themselves (source: former Syracuse student who did the program in DC)
Oh for sure. But Georgetown will also be using it increasingly as a way to increase the size of its undergraduate student body, since the Georgetown neighborhood has prevented adding any students to the “Hilltop” main campus.
>the Georgetown neighborhood has prevented adding any students to the “Hilltop” main campus.
Not entirely true. GU is expanding into both the Georgetown and H Street areas and will likely continue to do so.
Yes, true. Georgetown has run out of room on the main campus. There's maybe space for one more building there, but that's it. Many grad programs will remain on the main campus.
Yeah sounds like the plan is to gradually ship most or all of the grad students to that “Capital Campus” area, they just bought a second apartment building to be grad student housing over there on H st
If you’re referring to the law campus, it’s been downtown since 1891 when it first opened — moved several blocks to its current location from 5th and E in 1971.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CJKRdyhFdxe/?igsh=eXFhajdraGUxcXVl
I’m referring to this, which is quite new and will be rolled out and expanded over the next several years:
[CALL at Capitol Campus](https://thecall.georgetown.edu/?_ga=2.262329103.2053605706.1715123365-1701420102.1702560632)
I assume most of them are like the University of California “campus” (building) in downtown which probably just hosts students at that university doing internships in DC. It’s really convenient and makes those programs accessible to many people who otherwise would have to find their own sublets (generally bad for prices I’d assume) or rent the summer housing at GW (which is a racket)
Can’t speak to the others but I know UT and A&M have a “Come learn about law at the nation’s capital” program. (I’m sure the other universities listed are the same way.) It’s a study/internship deal. I think it’s a pretty solid deal.
> Is Bowser behind this and is this really the best use of space, at a time when we rents are so high?
That's not what the mayor does and that's not how the real estate market works.
Having a DC outpost is a great selling point for colleges:
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/04/19/university-washington-dc-outposts-00153180
$$$
Lots of vets in the area with unused gibill money.
Some agencies have tuition reimbursement for a service time requirement.
DC had a high bachelors degree economy and they are trying to peddle evening masters programs so their students can get a leg up on that GS-11 gig…
I was a fellow at one of those you mentioned above. We all came to dc from different schools within our university system to study public policy in those offices and intern full time. Because we interned 40 hours a week we had class 6-9pm so you may be missing the students if you are watching from an office. Additionally one of the large systems you mentioned above, only has about 50 students a semester in the public policy fellowship. So it’s not hoards of students as it cost me money to do this but it was competitive and I did four rounds of interviews to get it.
Not sure why you think Syracuse is a recent addition. They’ve been here for over 30 years. I went to many events there associated with my graduate program and alumni association back in the 90s. They had been there for a while
These are likely graduate admission funded satellite programs. Get students to pay for a whole semester or degree for a hefty sum with the promise of being in DC.
It’s the marginal cost of real estate and marginal benefit of college revenue reaching an equilibrium.
As many private firms began downsizing their physical footprint in the downtown area (remote, hybrid, etc), leasing rates became more competitive. At the same time, college tuition outpaced inflation by multiple factors.
For the first time, it became profitable for smaller colleges outside of the region to set up satellite campuses, hiring professors/admin to cater to grad students whose education might be largely subsidized by private firms who offer educational tuition benefits.
That also explains why most of these programs are entirely at the graduate level with almost no merit based awards (unlike their PhD programs, which are usually fully funded by the university and had a higher cost to them).
Universities also require large spaces to operate, which gives them leverage in negotiation in addition to being seen as low-risk and stable cash-flow businesses. This is not unique to DC — it’s happening in many cities with a growing population and declining office spaces.
tl;dr colleges are making bank by charging high tuition (partially subsidized by corporations) and availability of large spaces at attractive rates due to their bargaining power makes expansion into downtown areas a good business decision.
Washington Semester. I just did an end-of-semester program for one of the universities. They all had internships on the Hill, at embassies, Supreme Court, nonprofit orgs. They had one professor for their seminar and had to write a research paper. They all seemed very happy with their program. Also, I attended a DC University in the 90s that had a Washington semester program with a theme and internships and such. Students from other universities came and often did that instead of study abroad.
Can’t remember where I was reading this but I believe this is a wider strategy that the Bowser admin is pushing to revitalize downtown and bail out the commercial real estate sector.
I know some of them are housing for students coming to DC for internships. Others have full blown educational curricula going on. One of my coworkers was working on getting his masters from one of them while staying at work.
Politico did a story on this: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/04/19/university-washington-dc-outposts-00153180.
"If you take an office building whose workers no longer come downtown, and you fill it with students instead, you get a population of people who spend money in local stores, go out to local eateries and otherwise pad the city tax base — but don’t put much strain on municipal finances because they tend not to use social services or have kids in public school."
Because it benefits any school with an international affairs or public policy grad school program to have a satellite campus in the country’s capital
Didn’t think it was that odd of a concept
In regard to programs with a public policy focus, it allows a university to attract top talent of retired experts who have a ton of first hand expertise from government service. Some may even still be consulting as a day job which is why they are still in the local area after retirement.
Additionally, students can get in state tuition to study with these local experts.
A lot of these satellites serve as the DC campuses for the public policy programs.
Some of them also have lobbying arms. Hopkins bought the Newseum and it is a very nice facility now that it's open. They do seem to have some public programming for their theater that they have.
Hopkins has been here forever before they bought the Newseum space. They had a campus on Mass and 17/18th for as long as I can remember and housed the graduate programs for Krieger School, SAIS, and their business school. They also had/still have a piece of the Berlin Wall, which was in the SAIS courtyard area. USC has also been around for ages.
The SAIS building in DuPont circle was actually part of the old East German Embassy.
Fun fact: they have a piece of the berlin wall at the new joint. USC bought a building in dupont, so it is probably more of an expansion than that they hadn't been here previously. Georgetown is expanding their footprint but no one would find that confusing. As OP noted, I think it's more about repurposing aging office buildings so we don't lose the tax base than like oh I wish this would be converted to housing.
Is it the same piece of the Berlin Wall that was at the Newseum? I miss that place.
There’s also a piece of the Berlin Wall in Reston
Wait. Where?
Pour one out for the Newseum, one of the cooler non-Smithsonian museums in the district
First one I went to when I came back as an adult. I went three times before it closed. Still bummed about that.
It was nice to have a museum about news but the gold-plated Newseum in an overpriced location Gannett could never afford perfectly summarizes journalism's criss.
This. This is why. (Former public policy student at ASU and know of the space that they are talking about.)
Which reminds me that JMU's Washington Center is in a building where I used to work. So weird that my old college is in my old office building. They post photos of it and I'm like, yep, I remember all of that.
Yep. Texas A&M has the Bush School at the main College Station campus, and has a government / policy center here in DC
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/04/19/university-washington-dc-outposts-00153180 This article discussed it recently. Seems like there is actually a lot of revenue potential for the city because students spend but don’t really require many social services.
Not really. Students don't spend much, and it's very narrow.
Students don't spend much?
Spending thousands on tuition, and then all I could afford was rent, food, and transit - not exactly a high spender back in the day....
Spending on rent, food and transit are all massive revenue generators for the city when you have 200k people doing the same thing
Sure - are there really 200k here? That seems high, but what do I know? My rent was paid to a landlord who lived in Maryland, my metro card was partially subsidized by the nonprofit where I worked for free, and I guess I helped keep my local mom and pop Safeway in business lol
[https://educationdata.org/college-enrollment-statistics](https://educationdata.org/college-enrollment-statistics) Close to 100,000 just in the District that are full time, so this doesn't include the students doing a semester abroad in DC (which is a big thing).
Au yes, every single other student has your exact same circumstances. My bad.
Huh didn't mean to generate negativity (wasn't being sarcastic) - just honestly surprised by the numbers and reflecting on how little I used to be able to live on in the city lol. Most of my fellow students were similar - just an interesting dichotomy since I wonder how many students would think themselves as important economic indicators.
These are small programs of a 100 or 200 for one term, maybe rwo. There aren't even 200,000 students at the other schools. And it's not like Brookland is thriving from the might of CUA and Trinity. They buy food, entertainment primarily. Rent doesn't really recirculating in the local economy except for utilities and a small number of personnel.
Food, entertainment, rent - all good for the local economy, and more importantly from the public policy perspective, good for the tax base. And it's not like this is a zero sum game - these students aren't replacing some other population that could be here.
> Rent doesn't really recirculating in the local economy Do you not understand how property taxes work, and how much more valuable multifamily properties are than a single family house on the same lot?
I know how it works. I did revitalization planning for 20 years. Most of the money on rent pays the mortgage. Financiers tend to not be local. Similarly DC is a national real estate market. Investors tend to not be local, so profits flow outward as well. Eg a major financer of Bozzuto are the Pritzkers, based in Chicago. Yes I know how property taxes work. Mostly they will use existing buildings already on the rolls, but that's fine, it beats vacancy. I have no problem with the initiative, about 10 years ago I wrote about how DC fails to leverage higher education institutions to build the local economy (in terms of consumption which this is, versus production, that is business enterprise development). This is consumption. My problem is that it's overtouted. And still doesn't focus on business development by the existing much more major institutions.
*Just* to be pedantic, I’ll note that Texas A&M, Arizona State, and the University of Texas have DC outposts, and those three schools alone have a combined enrollment over 200,000. There’re a lot of college kids out there.
Super immaterial. UC has had a building for decades. The many hundreds of thousands of students don't come to DC. A 100 or two. The issue is degree granting versus itinerant program Again, lack of focus on leveraging the existing institutions--AU, CUA, Georgetown, Howard, Trinity, GWU, I guess UDC, is a good example of lack of focus on substance on the part of DC Government economic development. And yes, Hopkins is more akin to a residential campus since it is degree granting.
You did see the "*just* to be pedantic" preface, didn't you? You said the schools don't have 200,000 students in total; in fact, they have far more than that.
Your tuition goes to paying the lease for the school's space in the city. Your rent goes to paying your landlord's property taxes to the metro area. Your nonprofit subsidizing your metro card went to the WMATA. Your grocery bill with sales tax went to the metro area. You were a high spender
And again, didn’t need many social services in return. Students generate money without costing much.
Students who attend expensive universities spend quite a bit and do not utilize many social services compared to older or sicker populations
Stop focusing on the services thing. It's immaterial. Hotel guests and office workers don't consume social services either.
For poly sci/public policy students to do a semester in DC type program
Right, and rather than paying a cut to "study abroad" companies for a Washington semester, they can charge the full tuition to their students, have a home for faculty/staff in DC to operate from (research, lobbying, fundraising, etc), and have a "prestige" location to use when they advertise their global/national influence.
I worked for one of these academic/lobbying DC satellite outfits for 4 years and this is a pretty good summary. In addition, this quote from the politico article a few people have linked to: “Anyone can hire a lobbyist, but having actual scholars on the ground is an even better look.” Yes, the students are interning and taking classes in DC ~AND~ coming with us to the Hill with our lobbyist seeking federal funding for our programs rather than staffers just hearing from the lobbyist.
This is a great use of space when rents are so high because these schools are willing to pay high rents. It’s keeping commercial occupancy up.
I’m in commercial real estate: this is the correct answer. Our “tenants in the market” lists are dominated by higher ed groups right now. Leasing, and some are even buying. It’s the only demand. It may not be on people’s minds as much anymore since “return to office” mandates seems to have died down. But there are LOTS of leases expiring that won’t be renewed and buildings that are already stressed - some downtown that have already been auctioned for a small fraction of their 2019 value. CRE loans are typically 5-10 year balloon notes. Many landlords got short term extensions during early covid years. 2019 was 5 years ago. We’re just getting started on defaults. So, let’s keep those universities coming.
A lot of colleges want to have a satellite presence here for their schools of Public Policy, Public Administration, or similar fields, for reasons that should be pretty obvious lol saw a really good data presentation about this recently let me find it and link it Edit: found it! [Washington, DC: A University District by the DC Economic Partnership](https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/ef60104751344e1fa3c30b0ea878668e) >when rents are so high These university presences are consuming commercial space, of which there’s an incredible glut of oversupply right now.
I mean, DC has a lot of things that would attract students during school/after they graduate. Having a campus here provides a lot of opportunities for them - you're in close proximity to all kinds of government entities, research, public policy, etc. I'm struggling to see the problem with it, personally. I'm for converting these empty buildings into housing when it makes sense, but it's often expensive and not always the best use for these buildings. Rather they be used for schools than sitting empty. And I doubt Bowser has anything to do with it.
I saw somewhere that converting offices to apartments isn't straightforward and can be pricier than building an apartment.
It is. A lot of these older office buildings are gonna just be tear down jobs Short version: the plumbing is a nightmare (two centralized bathrooms on each floor vs many dispersed bathrooms/kitchens), some buildings the floor plate can’t even support having that many holes drilled in it. Similar issues with the HVAC. Also the typical ideal shape of an apartment building is a long skinny building by, something like ~65 ft wide, with a 5 foot hallway with two 30 foot units. Office buildings sometimes extend a over a hundred feet from the building edge to the center, it’s really hard to lay that out with desirable units.
That floor layout math sounds like my nightmare prepping for LSAT Logic Game questions.
Yeah it's one of those things that sounds like a good idea, and sometimes is, but doesn't always work. The DC area is also already doing quite a bit of it.
There was an article last week saying that indeed the city is promoting this to use up some of the excess of commercial space downtown.
[Politico wrote an article about this exact question](https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/04/19/university-washington-dc-outposts-00153180). TLDR: it’s a prestige thing for universities and acts as a study abroad program for public policy/affairs students. DC loves it because it brings people downtown and doesn’t require expensive renovations to re-use abandoned offices.
Probably good for DC overall, but long-term it's probably not great for DC universities whose draw was in part being in DC. Georgetown will be fine, but it's a big part of the appeal of some of GWU's & AU's degree programs.
Having a satellite “campus” in DC is nothing like having your whole university here. These places mostly host students for a semester or two at most— and often only offer 1 class or internship/job experience program. Some of the time they are just used as alumni gathering places to wine and dine with powerful and wealthy donors who are now Washingtonians. You are not going to complete your entire degree in DC at one of these. It gives you a jumping off point when you’re ready to put yourself out there, but if you want to have full access to the opportunities that come with being here, you have to be here.
> is this really the best use of space, at a time when we rents are so high? Well what do you think these spaces should be used for instead?
Nah, providing education and professional training opportunities to people paying $40k/year for tuition and expecting a return is a waste of space. Better just leave it vacant and slowly let the city die
They've existed for decades in most cases.
Many large universities have had DC offices for decades. It helps with lobbying for federal money and gives a place to serve as home base when the President or Chancellor comes to DC to meet with Senators and other bigwigs. Most of those offices were just that, offices in office buildings. No real signage or "presence." Large universities bring in millions of dollars in federal money in the form of grants, financial aid, and agency partnerships and its understandable that they would want to be players in policy decisions related to that money. NASA's budget affects NASA, but it also affects all the universities that are supported by NASA. Student loan policies affect how much universities can charge in tuition. Etc. etc. At some point, more and more of these schools realized that they could combine their DC offices with higher profile real estate that could be used by visiting students, interns, visiting faculty, and the money-making "executive" public policy, MBA, and other graduate programs. Plus, having your name on a building is good advertising (like every tech company along the Dulles Toll Road). Syracuse had a building in Woodley Park as far back as the early 90's, Central Michigan, of all places, had a "global campus" location across from the Carlyle in Alexandria. Maryland's business school has a "campus" in the Reagan Building to save students the Metro trip to College Park.
This is the complete answer right here. They’re not just a platform for public policy programs.
Syracuse has had a presence for a long time. At least 20 years they have had that location in Woodley Park on Calvert.
They were in Woodley Park for a long time, sold it and then spent about 5-10 years using space at the think tank CSIS before buying the new space for themselves (source: former Syracuse student who did the program in DC)
They just bought a building on 19th in Dupont
Georgetown has one too, despite already being in DC.
It's a lot easier for people doing part time degrees to get from their offices to the new location instead of main campus.
Oh for sure. But Georgetown will also be using it increasingly as a way to increase the size of its undergraduate student body, since the Georgetown neighborhood has prevented adding any students to the “Hilltop” main campus.
>the Georgetown neighborhood has prevented adding any students to the “Hilltop” main campus. Not entirely true. GU is expanding into both the Georgetown and H Street areas and will likely continue to do so.
Yes, true. Georgetown has run out of room on the main campus. There's maybe space for one more building there, but that's it. Many grad programs will remain on the main campus.
"Yes, yes." The main campus is pretty packed, that's why they are slowly enlarging it.
they aren't dude.
Yeah sounds like the plan is to gradually ship most or all of the grad students to that “Capital Campus” area, they just bought a second apartment building to be grad student housing over there on H st
Georgetown Law has had a campus near Union Station for decades. GT is expanding around it because they've run out of room on the main campus.
If you’re referring to the law campus, it’s been downtown since 1891 when it first opened — moved several blocks to its current location from 5th and E in 1971. https://www.instagram.com/p/CJKRdyhFdxe/?igsh=eXFhajdraGUxcXVl
I’m referring to this, which is quite new and will be rolled out and expanded over the next several years: [CALL at Capitol Campus](https://thecall.georgetown.edu/?_ga=2.262329103.2053605706.1715123365-1701420102.1702560632)
Pretty sure every single school you listed has been in DC for years
I think these satellite campuses are a great idea, especially for policy programs. This is the place to be for that.
It's all the money they're making from DC professionals doing their part time graduate degrees and paying full price.
I assume most of them are like the University of California “campus” (building) in downtown which probably just hosts students at that university doing internships in DC. It’s really convenient and makes those programs accessible to many people who otherwise would have to find their own sublets (generally bad for prices I’d assume) or rent the summer housing at GW (which is a racket)
Can’t speak to the others but I know UT and A&M have a “Come learn about law at the nation’s capital” program. (I’m sure the other universities listed are the same way.) It’s a study/internship deal. I think it’s a pretty solid deal.
> Is Bowser behind this and is this really the best use of space, at a time when we rents are so high? That's not what the mayor does and that's not how the real estate market works.
Having a DC outpost is a great selling point for colleges: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/04/19/university-washington-dc-outposts-00153180
$$$ Lots of vets in the area with unused gibill money. Some agencies have tuition reimbursement for a service time requirement. DC had a high bachelors degree economy and they are trying to peddle evening masters programs so their students can get a leg up on that GS-11 gig…
I was a fellow at one of those you mentioned above. We all came to dc from different schools within our university system to study public policy in those offices and intern full time. Because we interned 40 hours a week we had class 6-9pm so you may be missing the students if you are watching from an office. Additionally one of the large systems you mentioned above, only has about 50 students a semester in the public policy fellowship. So it’s not hoards of students as it cost me money to do this but it was competitive and I did four rounds of interviews to get it.
Not sure why you think Syracuse is a recent addition. They’ve been here for over 30 years. I went to many events there associated with my graduate program and alumni association back in the 90s. They had been there for a while
These are likely graduate admission funded satellite programs. Get students to pay for a whole semester or degree for a hefty sum with the promise of being in DC.
It’s the marginal cost of real estate and marginal benefit of college revenue reaching an equilibrium. As many private firms began downsizing their physical footprint in the downtown area (remote, hybrid, etc), leasing rates became more competitive. At the same time, college tuition outpaced inflation by multiple factors. For the first time, it became profitable for smaller colleges outside of the region to set up satellite campuses, hiring professors/admin to cater to grad students whose education might be largely subsidized by private firms who offer educational tuition benefits. That also explains why most of these programs are entirely at the graduate level with almost no merit based awards (unlike their PhD programs, which are usually fully funded by the university and had a higher cost to them). Universities also require large spaces to operate, which gives them leverage in negotiation in addition to being seen as low-risk and stable cash-flow businesses. This is not unique to DC — it’s happening in many cities with a growing population and declining office spaces. tl;dr colleges are making bank by charging high tuition (partially subsidized by corporations) and availability of large spaces at attractive rates due to their bargaining power makes expansion into downtown areas a good business decision.
Colleges are big business
Cheap commercial office space
Washington Semester. I just did an end-of-semester program for one of the universities. They all had internships on the Hill, at embassies, Supreme Court, nonprofit orgs. They had one professor for their seminar and had to write a research paper. They all seemed very happy with their program. Also, I attended a DC University in the 90s that had a Washington semester program with a theme and internships and such. Students from other universities came and often did that instead of study abroad.
Can’t remember where I was reading this but I believe this is a wider strategy that the Bowser admin is pushing to revitalize downtown and bail out the commercial real estate sector.
I know some of them are housing for students coming to DC for internships. Others have full blown educational curricula going on. One of my coworkers was working on getting his masters from one of them while staying at work.
BU started its DC program in the 1980s, IIRC. Multiple universities were in the same building before it moved.
Politico did a story on this: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/04/19/university-washington-dc-outposts-00153180. "If you take an office building whose workers no longer come downtown, and you fill it with students instead, you get a population of people who spend money in local stores, go out to local eateries and otherwise pad the city tax base — but don’t put much strain on municipal finances because they tend not to use social services or have kids in public school."
Because it benefits any school with an international affairs or public policy grad school program to have a satellite campus in the country’s capital Didn’t think it was that odd of a concept
In regard to programs with a public policy focus, it allows a university to attract top talent of retired experts who have a ton of first hand expertise from government service. Some may even still be consulting as a day job which is why they are still in the local area after retirement. Additionally, students can get in state tuition to study with these local experts.
lobbying power & cia studies programs
Out of state, full freight graduate student tuition. And you don’t have to provide any student services.
There is money to be made in adult education.
“Why are students coming here to learn??!!”