While Stanford at least no longer needs the “in California” moniker (for years, newspapers would refer to the exploits of Stanford professors as the work of academics at “Stanford in California,” something which lives on even on some of Stanford’s own websites), it still doesn’t always command the respect of its East Coast peers, especially overseas. Even though it is, by some ranking systems, second in the world, it still isn’t always as well known as its Ivy League brethren.
Given that bias (and even though we know that Stanford is really the best place to be), it’s nice to get some recognition. A recent faculty article in the Daily Princetonian by Anthony Grafton, a professor of history at Princeton provided just that. In it, he exhorts Princeton to follow Stanford’s lead in, stating that:
…if you listen to the presidents of the great American private universities, follow their policy decisions and their big investment plans (now mostly on hold, but they’ll be back), they seem to work from different criteria. Stanford — the Farm — looks like the model that the others are trying to emulate.
In particular, he wants to follow Stanford’s progress towards be an entrepreneurial university, one that embraces technology and change to get the best results in every field, not just science. As a student, I can’t imagine it any other way. Keep up the great work, Stanford.