Excerpted from: The Chronicle of Higher Education 
August 3, 2009

People who talk with John B. Simpson about UB2020, the plan to revitalize the State University of New York's Buffalo campus, along with Buffalo itself, will eventually hear the Seattle story.

It goes like this: Mr. Simpson, a young professor of psychology in 1975, landed a job at the University of Washington. Thrilled to be employed, he recalls, he packed up his belongings and drove his wife, two kids, and dog to the city, where they were met by a sign: "Will the last person leaving Seattle—turn out the lights." The sign was a response to 60,000 layoffs at Boeing, which had turned the city into what one journalist at the time called "a vast pawnshop," as people shed their belongings and got out of town....

Mr. Simpson's story may be more legend than history—the now-famous billboard was displayed for only two weeks in 1971—but it effectively imparts his lesson for the University at Buffalo, where he is president: A vibrant, entrepreneurial, ambitious, first-class university can lift up an entire region, even one as downtrodden as Western New York, one of the poorest areas in the country. In doing so, Buffalo could follow the "eds and meds" model that has buoyed postindustrial cities like Raleigh, N.C.; Pittsburgh; Philadelphia; and Baltimore.

The problem is that the University at Buffalo is not vibrant, has not traditionally been entrepreneurial, and is most certainly not first-class.

But with UB2020, the university is ambitious—or aggressive, depending on your point of view. The plan is an expansive effort to map out what the campus will look like in decades to come, eventually with 10,000 more students, 1,000 more faculty members, seven million more square feet of space, and a doubling of the university's current $1.7-billion economic impact on the region. This year, when many universities are halting construction projects, Buffalo is pushing ahead with $362-million in new construction, all part of the UB2020 plan...

UB2020 counts on the passage of a bill, now in the New York State Assembly, that would free the university from state regulations that Mr. Simpson and others here believe have foiled its growth and achievement over the decades. He wants the plan and the legislation, which have support from local development agencies and public figures, to fire up the university's ability to raise money—as well as its profile—from private donations, higher tuition, and public-private financing deals. UB2020 would essentially begin to create tiers in a state system that has been unusually egalitarian—"a socialistic enterprise," as Mr. Simpson puts it...

Certainly people have chafed—not least other SUNY campus leaders, who want such changes for their institutions, too, and fear being left behind. Others believe the plan will make Buffalo less accessible to lower-income students and open the door to mischief with state resources. "The UB2020 plan would be implemented through a process of basically destroying the university," says Phillip H. Smith, president of United University Professions, a union that represents faculty and staff members in the state system. What would be destroyed as the University at Buffalo aspires to a loftier status, he argues, is its vital accessibility to average New Yorkers...

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