In August 1996, Roosevelt University, long based on Chicago’s Michigan Avenue, opened a $21 million second home in Schaumburg. And much like a new bank or grocery will complete a small town, the arrival of the Albert A. Robin campus at its permanent home near Golf and Meacham Roads stamped the northwest suburbs with a more complete identity.
To be sure, higher education is nothing new here. Known for its elementary and secondary schools, the area is home to one of the state’s greatest concentrations of colleges, with 35 educating thousands of students on campuses big and small.
But Roosevelt’s move of its Robin Campus from temporary quarters in Arlington Heights seemed to say more: As the northwest suburbs and McHenry County continue to mature into one of Chicagoland’s most populous and financially potent sectors, higher education is coming along for the ride.
“This is not surprising to see colleges flooding the suburbs,” said David Merkowitz, public affairs director for the Washington-based American Council on Education, citing similar trends in Washington, D.C., and Miami. “Like many other businesses, colleges go where the action is.”
Suburban mainstays such as Harper College in Palatine and Oakton Community College in Des Plaines have steadily expanded their offerings.
And schools other than Roosevelt, including Northern Illinois University and National Louis University, have found that satellite branches are not enough to keep up with demand and are looking to expand.
While community colleges continue to capture the largest share of high school grads, many of these schools are affiliating with the newly arrived universities to let students transfer credits.
The result is a high-quality, comprehensive and accessible network of higher-education campuses offering a level of convenience not seen before in the northwest suburbs.
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“In high-growth areas,” Merkowitz said, “you will see new community colleges, state institutions and private colleges looking for the opportunities where there is a large base of people.”
Chicago’s northwest suburbs have seen some of the highest job growth in the country and employ one of every five workers in Cook County. The population continues to climb, and the Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission projects a 30 percent increase during the next quarter-century, to nearly 750,000 residents.
That’s a market that even the most urban schools, such as Roosevelt, can no longer afford to ignore.
University President Theodore Gross conceded as much in an editorial written days before the school’s opening in Schaumburg, explaining it this way:
“The northwest suburbs– which sometimes seem a fragmented collection of edge cities and towns, isolated businesses and separate school districts–are complementary to Chicago and together with the city form a unit in search of social, cultural and civic coherence. A university is one institution that can help provide that coherence.”
People like Emily Jenkins, a mother of two from Hanover Park, couldn’t be more thankful.
“I always planned to finish school no matter what, even when I took a year off to have my first child,” said Jenkins, a full-time mother, part-time retail employee and frequent volunteer. “It’s just something that I knew I had to do.”
Up at the crack of dawn and to bed well after 10 p.m., Jenkins has too little time, with far too much to do, as she pursues a career in elementary education at Roosevelt in Schaumburg.
She’s hardly alone.
The students pushing enrollments up on campuses in Schaumburg, Elgin, Palatine, Des Plaines and other suburbs are not typical freshmen.
The clientele is much older–the average age at Roosevelt’s Schaumburg campus is 29. They are wives and mothers, husbands and fathers; corporate types seeking further training courtesy of local companies, and new immigrants looking for a leg up.
For all of them, time is critical.
“More colleges and universities, whether two-year or four-year, are making higher education more accessible to the public in general,” said Lisa Gordey, public relations director at McHenry Community College, Crystal Lake.
The two-year college has seen some of the highest student growth in the state and recently completed a new center for advanced-technology studies.
“It’s easier for working adults to come after work and take classes nearby,” Gordey said.
It also offers relief from the headache of a Chicago commute.
“If I chose to go to Loyola in the city, it just wouldn’t make sense,” said Adam Cacioppo, a Roosevelt sophomore studying pre-law. “If I had a 9 a.m. class, I’d have to leave my home (in Hawthorn Woods) by 7. The traffic going into the city is amazing.”
Municipalities are also seeing the benefits as new schools enable those governments to plug into established research centers and boost community profiles.
In addition to educational and training programs, there are theatrical events, sporting events, seminars, and a rich multicultural setting unique to campus life.
As for economic benefits–at least, in terms of residential and commercial development–local real estate agents say it is difficult to measure but village officials say schools definitely increase a community’s commercial traffic.
Their students “buy their gas here, eat their lunch here,” said Jack Klaus, economi-development director for Des Plaines, which is looking to team up with Oakton and other area governments and schools to roll out a new marketing plan.
“There’s a whole host of things that these schools contribute,” Klaus said, and their presence “lets outsiders know that the community is open-minded and certainly willing to have this type of organization in their community.”