A university campus focusing on technology and business would be the perfect solution for the redevelopment of Fort Monmouth.
New York City recently announced it had chosen Cornell and Israel’s Technion to operate a new graduate school of applied sciences on Roosevelt Island. It is a brilliant idea which will create jobs, train our children for jobs in the 21st century, and serve as an incubator for start-up companies. We should use Fort Monmouth for a similar educational endeavor.
New Jersey lacks the capacity to educate all the students we produce — 36,000 college freshman leave the state; only 5,000 come to New Jersey. Thus, we are 31,000 spaces short. What better way to attract the best and the brightest minds to stay than a top-notch school to train them for the jobs of the future?
A college should be able make use of the strengths we have. Fort Monmouth’s proximity to New York, Philadelphia, New Jersey’s corporate centers, tech companies and pharmaceutical research centers provides a perfect environment for learning and business-education partnerships. The school itself will produce jobs, as will the graduates who start their own businesses.
Rather than copying the New York model, the college should be designed to take advantage of our strengths. Stanford, which also applied to operate the New York school, should be contacted. An additional campus of Rutgers is another possibility. I encourage the Governor and those making decisions about the future of the fort to strongly consider its use as a college.
Herb Lazar
Manalapan