Why Another University Might Benefit New York

Good morning. It’s Tuesday. Today we’ll look at why a think tank says New York City needs another university. We’ll also get details on Donald Trump’s attempts to arrange a bond for more than $550 million in his civil fraud case.

Credit…Julia Gillard for The New York Times

Of all the things New York City needs right now, is another private university one of them?

Jonathan Bowles, the executive director of the Center for an Urban Future, a think tank in Manhattan, said that the answer was yes “because we’re in a different economic environment, postpandemic.”

“If there was anything that could derail the city’s economic progress,” he told me, “it would be a decline in college grads moving to the city. Remote work, along with the city’s affordability crisis, has opened up that possibility. One way to counteract that is to expand the pipeline of people coming here before they even get a degree.”

Attending college in New York would increase the likelihood that graduates would look for and find their first jobs in the city, he said. “If you look at the city’s economic success over the past few decades, nothing has been more important than attracting and retaining highly educated people,” he said. “Companies had to be here because that talent base was here, even if it meant paying the city’s high real estate prices and taxes.”

The connection between college and the economy is so important that a report from the center said that City Hall should find city-owned land and commit to providing $100 million for a new campus.