The reason silicon valley became a haven for startups in the first place, going back to the dark ages of the 1950’s, was because of the research universities in the area, especially Stanford and Berkeley. Shockley semiconductor, HP, Fairchield semiconductor, any number of firms came out of that, later on this led to the revolution of personal computers (a ton of the computer revolution came out of Xerox’s Palo Alto research center, which given its location near Stanford says a lot…). Plus the Bay Area is an attractive place to live for a number of reasons, which helps attract talented people.
And no, Silicon valley is not unique, but any place that hopes to recreate it has to have certain things to make it work. Research universities are one of the factors, the other is being attractive to live in. Denver is a relatively big city that has cultural offerings and especially things to attract young people, Austin Texas is a college town with a thriving music and arts scene that is very different than much of the surrounding state, Nashville has the same kind of vibe because it again has things to offer the young, Atlanta has big corporations but there are also startups there as well, again because of what the city is in attracting people. Other places have failed, Provo Utah tried back in the 1980’s to become another Silicon valley and failed, they had both telecom and networking startups there that ultimately failed to create a new silicon valley, it was attractive to people who liked to ski, but it lacked the research university and also the diversity to attract young people. Other towns in more rural areas have tried this, arguing about the quality of life, lower costs, but they fail because startups are a young person’s game, and young people are not attracted to places selling themselves as Normal Rockwell land, not to mention again such places don’t have the research base or the education in the area to support such things.
@mathmom:
The for profit schools you are talking about, like ITT tech, Katherine Gibbs, and the like were trade schools, they offered associate degrees or certificates, and were decent at what they did because they sold themselves as what they were (much like today places like Lincoln tech in my area, or DeVry, are honest with what they offer). Problem is many of these trade schools started calling themselves “colleges” or “universities” when the level of training was not at that level.ITT tech has been cited for that by the government, overselling what they are doing, because employers basically don’t see this as college level education
To be honest, I am a lot less concerned about Falwell then I am about federal funding in research, you could potentially see things like research grants pulled from climate science or alternate energy research, or given to research something like ‘Creation science’, or simply gut basic research. Basic research is still primarily the domain of government grants, and I am afraid that the mentality will be 'if it is worth researching, business will do it", which is quite honestly historically bogus. Falwell could potentially try and steer education aid from mainstream universities to places like Bob Jones University, they could end up sending federal aid money and student loans to make for profit schools make a lot of money, but his reach would be pretty limited, on the other hand federal grants for research scare me more than a bit, given the current wind in politics.