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JH opened as a university in 1876; I doubt it has any long-term issues.
Yale is a great school but I wouldn't be caught dead in New Haven CT. I doubt it's location is playing a role in recruitment of students, staff or faculty either. As for rankings, last time I checked JH was ranked #13 in the country for national universities by US News and World Report. The rankings' top slots are filled with the Ivies (8) and then Stanford, UChicago and MIT so JH is right in the mix.
Schools that are in not-so-great locations have all sorts of ways to sweeten the pot for staff and faculty and students are only staying a couple of years and stick close to campus so they don't care about the location.
The academic reputation was higher in past days than today (thankfully, it is still very high, as your rankings indicate). You probably know that Hopkins was the first university in the United States to run a graduate program according to the German PhD model. In those days, JHU was often thought to be the number-one school in the country.
It would be interesting to go back to old USNWR rankings and see if I am correct that there has been a little bit of a downward drift since, say, 1980. I think so, but I may be wrong, as I am going only from distant memory.
By the way -- it's parents who care about the location, and often it's parents who pay the bills for kids who attend JHU.
Re: parents footing the bill for education. Again, I don't believe there is a huge upswell of parents saying no, they aren't sending their kid to one of the most prestigious schools in the country because of its location. Again: Yale.
Crime is on the decline, the population is on the rise and Homewood is fairly safe, although its best to be on the watch for crimes of opportunity. If application numbers didn't dip 10 years when the zombie apocalypse was going on, they aren't now. Rankings are determined, in part, by the number of applications received, the number of students accepted and the number that actually show up. All those numbers remain consistently high for JH.
If we were talking about JH being located in Detroit or Flint, Michigan, then I would totally agree with you.
I don't have any systematic information to convey, but based on my own experience working for many years with the graduates of just about all of the top schools, I would say that Yale is uniquely the best university in the English-speaking world (sorry, Harvard people ). This will protect Yale. Hopkins is excellent, but not quite as good as Yale (in my experience and opinion). Whether that will suffice to protect it or not remains to be seen.
Some very odd sentiments on this thread so I'm compelled to post.
Let's clarify a few things.
1. Hopkins is not going to leave Baltimore. Nothing short of a nuclear attack would force Hopkins to abandon its current campuses and rebuild elsewhere. Hopkins has too much money invested in its physical fabric both at Homewood and the hospital complex and in case you hadn't noticed, Hopkins has been on a near-non-stop building boom for the twenty years, adding expensive new academic buildings and hospital wings on both campuses. Hopkins has been pouring money into Charles Village and Hopkins has also expanded into other areas of Baltimore - the university now occupies part of the old Rotunda site and the old Eastern High School complex.
2. Hopkins is absolutely stellar in certain sectors. The medical school and school of public health have a handful of peers and no other competitors. People who are offered leading roles and professorships at these schools rarely turn them down. Many of my neighbors work for Hopkins in one capacity or another and they're all delighted to be in Baltimore partly because the area's relatively low cost of living compared to DC or Boston or New York or California allows them to live a very pleasant lifestyle. Yes, inside Baltimore's city limits. Scores of Hopkins professors and administrators live in Baltimore and would be vehemently opposed to the university relocating outside the city.
3. Hopkins undergraduate has never been quite as good or prestigious as the graduate divisions, especially the science and research divisions. That's not to imply it's inferior, not at all, but the school's Germanic model meant that the focus on undergraduate education has historically been secondary to the professional and graduate schools, so Hopkins routinely lost the cream of the crop to the Ivies+Stanford+Duke. This is slowly but steadily changing and the previous and current presidents have plowed hundreds of millions in improving the undergraduate experience - in Baltimore, which includes reinvestment in Charles Village, which is another reason why Hopkins isn't moving anywhere.
4. Hopkins will never be part of the Ivy League. The Ivy League (and I say this as a double Ivy alum and parent of two Ivy alums) is an athletic conference of only eight schools. It has never invited other schools to join the Ivy league and it never will. What makes the Ivy conference stand out from the rest is that the universities do not offer athletic scholarships. Athletic students are recruited and admitted, and given financial aid based on need, but they are not offered specific athletic scholarships. Hopkins does for its lacrosse team.
As for Hopkins and Baltimore, Baltimore owes Hopkins, not the other way around. I can't imagine what Baltimore would be like without Hopkins' presence and the wealth of educated people it's brought to the region.
The other question about gentrification of East Baltimore.. is what was there BEFORE Hopkins began their expansion? I dont think it was a well established neighborhood like what happened in W. Baltimore where the highway to nowhere is.. They tore down some well established neighborhoods for a highway that was never even finished thus uprooting longstanding residents and businesses and also displacing residents of some lower income areas who now live in Park Heights.. in likely worse conditions than their parents lived when they were in W. Baltimore.
Gentrification in Baltimore is moreso in Canton, Federal Hill, Woodberry/Hampden, Remington, to name a few...most of the people that grew up in these neighborhoods have likely left the city entirely. Most of the residents of East Baltimore have moved to NE Baltimore (Bel Air Edision, Gardenville, Hamilton, even Waverly) and in many cases found better housing....so they havent even left the City. I know that people dont like the idea of being displaced but in Baltimore often times its for the better and certainly not what is occurring in DC and NYC where people are being forced to leave the City Limits entirely because of housing cost and taxes. Baltimore, as a whole, is probably one of the most affordable places to live in the Region.. Now, every place that is "affordable" may not be "desirable" but thats where the City should focus its efforts by enforcing housing and building codes... not to mention dealing with crime issues....
Wow this thread has gotten on some ridiculous tangents. Thanks Tallybalt for pointing out the obvious. Two clear comparisons here are UPenn's role in West Philadelphia and Yale's in New Haven in the last 15 years or so. Maybe some of you haven't noticed the improvement but I can guarantee every administrator of an urban university has. UPenn in particular has seen a difference in who is willing to go there now.
Hopkins Hospital has had various neighborhood schemes with little success going back decades, until they went big with EBDI. Remains to be seen how that will work out, especially for their biotech investment. They're comparatively late in trying to shore up shore up Charles Village by building out to St. Paul and now with HCPI: http://web.jhu.edu/administration/pr...d-1-2-2013.pdf
Are they agents of gentrification? My answer is either "duh" or "what's the real question you want to ask?" The effect will be some gentrification, but I can't answer what their intents are.
Where is Hopkins going after all these years? Where are any of the major universities in the middle of the inner cities going? I put my bet on nowhere.
Did anyone read the Sun story about the Henderson-Hopkins school controversy? Sure, nearby residents want their children to attend. And I can't blame them, especially if most of the slots are taken by children of Hopkins employees. That's not right.
That article was what pushed me to post here. SRB has a goal of bringing 10,000 families into Baltimore and I think that one way she can work on that is by trying to keep college students who attend schools in and around Baltimore in the City. Most of the people that I know that have graduated from schools in the area try to stay in Baltimore because it's fairly cheap and there are jobs here and in DC.
But, shouldn't more be done to help improve the lives of the longtime residents of Baltimore City? It's great to see Hopkins invest in East Baltimore but shouldn't their investment benefit both Hopkins employees and local residents? I feel that some balance needs to be made. I find it commendable to see MICA try to expand into Station North and help revitalize North Avenue but I think that it's easier (and less publicized) than Hopkins effort to revitalize East Baltimore because their isn't as much displacement occurring.
Some very odd sentiments on this thread so I'm compelled to post.
Let's clarify a few things.
1. Hopkins is not going to leave Baltimore. Nothing short of a nuclear attack would force Hopkins to abandon its current campuses and rebuild elsewhere. Hopkins has too much money invested in its physical fabric both at Homewood and the hospital complex and in case you hadn't noticed, Hopkins has been on a near-non-stop building boom for the twenty years, adding expensive new academic buildings and hospital wings on both campuses. Hopkins has been pouring money into Charles Village and Hopkins has also expanded into other areas of Baltimore - the university now occupies part of the old Rotunda site and the old Eastern High School complex.
2. Hopkins is absolutely stellar in certain sectors. The medical school and school of public health have a handful of peers and no other competitors. People who are offered leading roles and professorships at these schools rarely turn them down. Many of my neighbors work for Hopkins in one capacity or another and they're all delighted to be in Baltimore partly because the area's relatively low cost of living compared to DC or Boston or New York or California allows them to live a very pleasant lifestyle. Yes, inside Baltimore's city limits. Scores of Hopkins professors and administrators live in Baltimore and would be vehemently opposed to the university relocating outside the city.
3. Hopkins undergraduate has never been quite as good or prestigious as the graduate divisions, especially the science and research divisions. That's not to imply it's inferior, not at all, but the school's Germanic model meant that the focus on undergraduate education has historically been secondary to the professional and graduate schools, so Hopkins routinely lost the cream of the crop to the Ivies+Stanford+Duke. This is slowly but steadily changing and the previous and current presidents have plowed hundreds of millions in improving the undergraduate experience - in Baltimore, which includes reinvestment in Charles Village, which is another reason why Hopkins isn't moving anywhere.
4. Hopkins will never be part of the Ivy League. The Ivy League (and I say this as a double Ivy alum and parent of two Ivy alums) is an athletic conference of only eight schools. It has never invited other schools to join the Ivy league and it never will. What makes the Ivy conference stand out from the rest is that the universities do not offer athletic scholarships. Athletic students are recruited and admitted, and given financial aid based on need, but they are not offered specific athletic scholarships. Hopkins does for its lacrosse team.
As for Hopkins and Baltimore, Baltimore owes Hopkins, not the other way around. I can't imagine what Baltimore would be like without Hopkins' presence and the wealth of educated people it's brought to the region.
That article was what pushed me to post here. SRB has a goal of bringing 10,000 families into Baltimore and I think that one way she can work on that is by trying to keep college students who attend schools in and around Baltimore in the City. Most of the people that I know that have graduated from schools in the area try to stay in Baltimore because it's fairly cheap and there are jobs here and in DC.
But, shouldn't more be done to help improve the lives of the longtime residents of Baltimore City? It's great to see Hopkins invest in East Baltimore but shouldn't their investment benefit both Hopkins employees and local residents? I feel that some balance needs to be made. I find it commendable to see MICA try to expand into Station North and help revitalize North Avenue but I think that it's easier (and less publicized) than Hopkins effort to revitalize East Baltimore because their isn't as much displacement occurring.
Yes that's the goal, but unfortunately it can only happen if the areas are cleaned up (which Hopkins is doing), but usually comes at the expense of renters...
Again what's going on at Hopkins is a good thing.
Also, I really don't know what can be done to improve the lives of longtime residents that already has not been done. There are tons home ownership programs that just give away money, in addition to grants and forgivable loans for people to improve their homes in target neighborhoods. What else can the city do?
While we are at it, all of Baltimore's universities/colleges have been playing important roles in bettering Baltimore. The areas around University of Baltimore, University of MD downtown, MICA, Coppin, and others have all seen many improvements.
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). This will protect Yale. Hopkins is excellent, but not quite as good as Yale (in my experience and opinion). Whether that will suffice to protect it or not remains to be seen.
