With Pittsburgh vying to attract Amazon’s second headquarters, we’re reminded of the vital role that colleges and universities have played in our regional transformation and in helping to attract companies, like Amazon, to the region.
I didn’t quite realize the extent to which Pittsburgh is one of the truly great college towns in America until I moved here to become president of Chatham University. I knew about Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh, but I wasn’t aware that Pittsburgh’s colleges and universities employ nearly 25,000 people and enroll more than 70,000 students. That’s more than 20 percent of the city’s population, and one of the highest concentrations of higher education talent anywhere in the United States.
