-Tax the endowments of large universities heavily, and offer exemptions for schools that open up satellite campuses in areas with below average median incomes (An MIT branch in Flint, a Stanford campus in Buffalo, ect.)
I was a bit confused by this at first, but I think ultimately SJoyce's point was that there are few, if any, good jobs coming to locals, elite schools with sizable endowments like these are not moving there to begin accepting members of poorer communities en masse and that the high-income individuals brought in for the intellectual positions will not spend any free time in the local community but will locate into an established, wealthy part of the city, commute and leave with very limited benefits for the intended beneficiaries from this policy. I think the benefits of this type of arrangement would be chiefly that students already going there do tend to have some attachment to the local community and take pride in serving it in many ways as time permits, but ultimately, these people are likely taking on debt as is and do not have incomes so there is only so much they could add to the actual economy beyond 'doing good'. So in sum, capital spending will have serious limits for exclusionary reasons and in urban metros, the vast amount of consumption will not take place in the community.
Education has proven to be a solid tool for certain small cities (smaller than Buffalo) and more rural areas where it exists and people spend time in the community, but the education market (especially for graduate professional degrees) seems pretty saturated as is so using this for a non-established brand name obviously has to be done with an abundance of caution and backing - California or maybe even Texas could probably do so successfully if they were willing to provide the resources for a school to be competitive but this is not all that feasible in some places, and I don't know why a closed off private school would want to partake in this. Giving the (dis)incentive for ultimately so few benefits does not seem like a wise strategy.
Since Buffalo was explicitly mentioned, why no focus on actually developing the university that is actually there and turning it into one of those very strong publics as has been intended for so long (and seems to be in progress). What added benefit would a Stanford bring (and who would willingly locate to Stanford at Buffalo) that a state aided effort would not have? Just invest in our public schools already! Ultimately with a school like a better funded Buffalo (in conjunction with a broader reaching public nearby), you actually get people tied into the local community. The opposite proposal attracts people looking for a short-cut.
[Surely that drifted into nothing to do with the article at hand XD hopefully mildly on topic]
