Stanford May Offer MBA in New York

Imagine getting a Stanford MBA while studying in New York?

It may not be as farfetched as it seems, if New York City officials approve a plan by Stanford for a New York satellite campus. Stanford is among 27 universities apparently vying for a chance to create a New York campus.

Stanford University President John Hennessey told the school’s faculty on Thursday (April 14) that if chosen by New York the university would first offer graduate degrees in business at the campus.

The campus would start small, with 20 to 25 faculty members from the Graduate School of Business, the design school and the entrepreneurship center at the school of engineering, but ultimately could have as many as 100 professors there.

“We can attract great faculty and great students committed to Stanford and a New York campus,” Hennessey said. “We believe this is a great opportunity … to create a high-quality institution, which could become the nucleus for a major center of innovation, just as has happened in the Bay Area.”

In December, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg invited universities worldwide to submit proposals for applied science and engineering campuses that would help “diversify the city’s economy and boost the growing technology sector.”

The New York City Economic Development Corporation received 18 proposals from 27 universities, including Cornell, Columbia, the University of Chicago and schools in India, Finland and South Korea.

New York is expected to review the proposals and will likely narrow the field before inviting selected universities to submit more detailed proposals this summer. They plan to select one or more winning proposals by year’s end to receive what city officials are calling “a significant capital contribution” to build a campus.

Stanford’s preliminary proposal calls for the campus to be located on Manhattan’s Roosevelt Island in the East River. However, Robert Reidy, Stanford’s vice president for land, buildings and real estate, told the San Francisco Chronicle that the university is also “quietly trying to pursue a Manhattan option” because “Manhattan has a vibrancy and energy that is very appealing.”

Either way, construction could begin in 2013 and continue in phases for 25 years, but as many as 450 masters and doctoral students could enroll in the fall of 2015.