Fertile ground: a Boston university sees green growing from a branch it opened in Charlotte.

• Author: Campbell, Spencer
• Position: FEATURE

If Northeastern University was seeking a site symbolic of why it came to Charlotte, it could have done worse than the space it moved into last year. Perched on the 11th floor of a downtown building, the Boston private school's satellite campus overlooks two statues standing at the intersection of Trade and Tryon streets: The Future and Commerce. Northeastern opened 14,000 square feet of offices and classrooms in October, making Charlotte the first link in a $60 million chain of graduate programs it plans to open. It's targeting cities "that were growing, diversifying in their base of industries, had attracted young professionals into the area but where educational opportunities were not as prominent as other cities," says Cheryl Richards, Northeastern's Charlotte dean and CEO.

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Though Mecklenburg County has a larger population than Wake County, it has 14.9% fewer people with graduate and professional degrees--76,622 compared with 90,030, according to the 2010 census. That, Richards says, is due to a wealth of research universities such as N.C. State University, UNC Chapel Hill and Duke University in the Triangle and the dearth of them in Charlotte. "There just hasn't been anybody serving the graduate professional in the region." Northeastern offers eight master's degrees to meet the needs of growing sectors of the local economy, including finance, health care, energy, defense and aerospace. Though classes began in January, she won't reveal enrollment, contending it's too early for the number to be meaningful. A North-eastern employee did say the school received about 270 inquiries between October and March, and Richards predicts the programs will have a few thousand students within five years.

Her comments might leave some scratching their heads, considering all of the graduate-level, business-related programs that have set up shop in the Queen City (opposite page). "Many organizations did the same research we did that said Charlotte was under-served for graduate education," says Steven Reinemund, dean of Wake Forest University Schools of Business in Winston-Salem. Wake opened an MBA program in suburban Charlotte in 1.995 and, after spending $4 million to renovate...