What do I do with these billions of dollars in the endowment? Ah yes buy some really expensive real estate, and continue the whole artificial scarcity that is my brand.
Includes a lot of info that the WSJ article glazed over (eg. "Vanderbilt’s planned San Francisco campus expects to serve about 1,000 undergraduate and graduate students")
Looking at Vandy NYC [0], I'm guessing they're trying to pull a Wharton@SF and expand their BSchool's presence in the Bay (and thus enhancing their alumni pool) along with subsuming CCA which has been under tough financial strain for the past few years.
I'm also guessing the Nashville moniker is negatively impacting undergrad yield (eg. I and my peers didn't even apply to CS@GT for undergrad because of racial, LGBTQ+, and body autonomy worries in Georgia and I know for a fact that Duke has been facing issues with yield protection as well)
Edit: You may not agree with these views, but they are actively considered by students nowadays. Most American undergrads are now nonwhite, women, or LGBTQ+, and overwhelmingly lean liberal to progressive. As such, schools in Republican states are negatively impacted even if they are located in Democrat bubbles like Nashville, Austin, or Atlanta.
I went to GT and was just at a football game with my teenage daughter. She had a blast and commented how many “brown girls like her” were there compared to her very WASPy, super-liberal Maryland school. She also commented about there being babies everywhere, which was also a plus.
Yield Rate (percentage of admitted students who accept) is what matters, not acceptance rate.
Most people who get into Vandy (such as me and my peers years ago) also got into Columbia [1], UChicago [2], Northwestern [3], and other similar programs.
Yet Vanderbilt's yield rate of 45% [0] compared to 53-63% of its peers highlights this rising discrepancy, with students choosing to attend alternative peer programs.
The only thing that differentiates Vanderbilt from (eg.) Rice was prestige as a supposed T15, yet Vanderbilt's ranking and prestige has been dropping significantly over the past decade [4], and this leaves a university like Vandy in a tough position.
The overwhelming majority of students who get into a Vanderbilt tier university lean liberal to progressive and/or are a racial minority, and for these candidates Vandy is not as attractive as it's peers (the likelihood of being "hate crimed" as an Asian American is much higher in Nashville compared to New Haven). Conversely, Vandy and Nashville is viewed as too "woke" by conservative students so they are less interested in matriculating (and anyhow, the overwhelming majority of bachelor degree holders end up leaning liberal).
As such, if Vanderbilt wishes to retain it's value proposition, it has no choice but to branch out from it's historical geography becuase it otherwise faces the prospect of being relegated into the same bin as Wake Forest or Tulane - a somewhat prestigious but geographically limited university.
For high achieving students (and their parents) and academic faculty, such a prospect is not very attractive.
What do I do with these billions of dollars in the endowment? Ah yes buy some really expensive real estate, and continue the whole artificial scarcity that is my brand.
At least they are spending it.
The actual announcement by Vandy - https://news.vanderbilt.edu/2026/01/13/vanderbilt-university...
Includes a lot of info that the WSJ article glazed over (eg. "Vanderbilt’s planned San Francisco campus expects to serve about 1,000 undergraduate and graduate students")
Looking at Vandy NYC [0], I'm guessing they're trying to pull a Wharton@SF and expand their BSchool's presence in the Bay (and thus enhancing their alumni pool) along with subsuming CCA which has been under tough financial strain for the past few years.
I'm also guessing the Nashville moniker is negatively impacting undergrad yield (eg. I and my peers didn't even apply to CS@GT for undergrad because of racial, LGBTQ+, and body autonomy worries in Georgia and I know for a fact that Duke has been facing issues with yield protection as well)
Edit: You may not agree with these views, but they are actively considered by students nowadays. Most American undergrads are now nonwhite, women, or LGBTQ+, and overwhelmingly lean liberal to progressive. As such, schools in Republican states are negatively impacted even if they are located in Democrat bubbles like Nashville, Austin, or Atlanta.
[0] - https://www.vanderbilt.edu/nyc/
Exactly the opposite is happening, enrollment-wise: https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-southern-college-boom
I went to GT and was just at a football game with my teenage daughter. She had a blast and commented how many “brown girls like her” were there compared to her very WASPy, super-liberal Maryland school. She also commented about there being babies everywhere, which was also a plus.
Vanderbilt has an acceptance rate of 3-4%, which makes it almost as exclusive as Stanford.
They aren’t having trouble getting applicants.
Yield Rate (percentage of admitted students who accept) is what matters, not acceptance rate.
Most people who get into Vandy (such as me and my peers years ago) also got into Columbia [1], UChicago [2], Northwestern [3], and other similar programs.
Yet Vanderbilt's yield rate of 45% [0] compared to 53-63% of its peers highlights this rising discrepancy, with students choosing to attend alternative peer programs.
The only thing that differentiates Vanderbilt from (eg.) Rice was prestige as a supposed T15, yet Vanderbilt's ranking and prestige has been dropping significantly over the past decade [4], and this leaves a university like Vandy in a tough position.
The overwhelming majority of students who get into a Vanderbilt tier university lean liberal to progressive and/or are a racial minority, and for these candidates Vandy is not as attractive as it's peers (the likelihood of being "hate crimed" as an Asian American is much higher in Nashville compared to New Haven). Conversely, Vandy and Nashville is viewed as too "woke" by conservative students so they are less interested in matriculating (and anyhow, the overwhelming majority of bachelor degree holders end up leaning liberal).
As such, if Vanderbilt wishes to retain it's value proposition, it has no choice but to branch out from it's historical geography becuase it otherwise faces the prospect of being relegated into the same bin as Wake Forest or Tulane - a somewhat prestigious but geographically limited university.
For high achieving students (and their parents) and academic faculty, such a prospect is not very attractive.
[0] - https://www.parchment.com/c/college/college-1624-Vanderbilt-...
[1] - https://www.parchment.com/c/college/college-319-Columbia-Uni...
[2] - https://www.parchment.com/c/college/college-1416-University-...
[3] - https://www.parchment.com/c/college/college-945-Northwestern...
[4] - https://vanderbilthustler.com/2023/09/19/vanderbilt-drops-to...