Keeping the Ripest Fruit in the Garden State

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President Barchi, left, led a tour of newly completed facilities at Rutgers University–New Brunswick, including the Honors College on the College Avenue Campus, outlining to state senators Stephen Sweeney, center, and Bob Smith, right, how buildings such as these, and those nearing completion, will attract the state’s top students.

Photography: 

Nick Romanenko

For years, New Jersey has been a net exporter of college-bound students. Last year alone, an estimated 30,000 high school graduates left the Garden State to attend colleges and universities across America. There are many reasons, and we can’t do anything about some of them, like a teenager’s desire to get away from home and experience a different culture and geography than New Jersey’s. New Jersey is a very small state, and sometimes students just want to “get out of the neighborhood.”

We can, however, do something about addressing the other explanations. There is growing support among legislative leaders to take the steps necessary to keep the best and brightest students in New Jersey. State senate president Stephen Sweeney and state senator Bob Smith recently joined President Barchi on a tour of the newly completed Institute for Food, Nutrition, and Health on the George H. Cook Campus and the Honors College on the College Avenue Campus, both at Rutgers University–New Brunswick. The group also toured the Rutgers–New Brunswick sites of the chemistry and chemical biology building, on the Busch Campus, and the School of Arts and Sciences building, on the College Avenue Campus. Both facilities, which will be completed by fall 2016, were funded, in part, from the Building Our Future Bond Act, which voters overwhelming approved in 2012.

Senator Sweeney made it clear: “We cannot continue to have our best and brightest students leave New Jersey. The work that Rutgers is undertaking, with the help and support of our bond act, will help keep them here.”

Senator Sweeney indicated that he would like to see a second higher education bond act introduced in the next few years in order to build on the momentum of the $750 million 2012 bond act. That’s welcome news because nearly a quarter-century lapsed between the last two rounds of capital funding for higher education in New Jersey.

The effort needs to go beyond bricks and mortar and develop ideas like the successful honors colleges that are thriving in New Brunswick, Camden, and Newark—magnets for attracting top homegrown students. There needs to be more capacity at other state colleges and universities as well. No students should leave New Jersey because of a lack of space, but Rutgers cannot meet that challenge on its own, and the rigors of a Rutgers education may not be suited for every student.

But, we need to do more to keep our students here. As Senator Sweeney said: “The one thing you don’t want to do is export them. They are our future.”

Peter J. McDonough is the senior vice president for external affairs at Rutgers.