Northeastern University¡¯s move to bail out Mills College in Oakland was projected by experts to answer a huge demand for technical training around Silicon Valley that online education so far has proven unable to fully serve.

Northeastern, an ambitious fast-growing research institution, has been limited in explaining its intentions for Mills, a women-only liberal arts campus covering land twice the size of Northeastern¡¯s home in Boston.

But experts on education and Silicon Valley saw it as a long-awaited antidote to the chronic failure of local universities and largely online outside entrants to meet the massive appetite for workers in the top US technology centre.

¡°We could have three more of these without tapping the demand that¡¯s there,¡± Michael Kirst, emeritus professor of education at Stanford University, said of Northeastern¡¯s expected reorienting of the Mills campus toward technology industry needs.

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¡°It¡¯s smart, and I was delighted to see them do it,¡± said Professor Kirst, co-author of?ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø and Silicon Valley: Connected but Conflicted,??cataloguing the failures of colleges to serve the local industry.

The need for a big new institution with undergraduate and graduate programmes ¡°has been obvious for some time¡±, said Henry Etzkowitz, president of the International Triple Helix Institute, which promotes university-industry-government collaboration around Silicon Valley.

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Mills, founded in 1852 and the first women¡¯s college on the West Coast, had long been seeking a partner to help address persistent financial troubles. And Northeastern has a clear record of adding campuses in locations where it sees demand for the training it provides. The Mills campus will be its??and?.

Even with the clear market-driven case for a physical expansion of technology-related higher education in the iconic San Francisco Bay area, Northeastern was seen by experts as a rarity in its ability to consider doing it.

Most other colleges and universities either could not afford such an expansion, or could not overcome the likely faculty opposition to large-scale investments outside their home campus, said Donald Kilburn, chief executive of University of Massachusetts Online.

¡°There¡¯s only a few places that have both the resources and the culture to actually attempt something like this,¡± he said. "Northeastern is one of those places."

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Mr Kilburn is the head of one of several efforts by traditional institutions ¨C other such non-profit operators include Carnegie Mellon, Arizona State, and Southern New Hampshire universities ¨C to meet local demand in places such as Silicon Valley.

That supply problem has endured in the renowned Silicon Valley, Dr Etzkowitz said, for reasons that include Stanford¡¯s reluctance to expand in size and state restrictions on growth of the University of California system.

Some campuses ¨C such as San Jos¨¦ State University, which can take only about a third of its 60,000 applicants, and Northeastern¡¯s two existing campuses in the area ¨C lack the room to expand affordably, Professor Kirst said. Mills was a great opportunity, he said, because its Oakland location provides 135 acres in a relatively low-cost part of the Bay area.

While Mr Kilburn works to offer online solutions from his own base in Massachusetts ¨C including a partnership with Brandman University in southern California ¨C he acknowledged that there were some types of teaching and students for whom the option of in-person instruction will make the Northeastern-Mills option a valuable attraction.

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¡°The jury is out on the question¡± of how essential that will prove to be, he said.

paul.basken@timeshighereducation.com