Excerpt from article by Jay Walljasper
"An increasingly globalized economy leaves communities everywhere anxious about losing good jobs. Even the prosperous Twin Cities is no exception, as the closing of the St. Paul Ford plant and the transfer of Delta Air Lines employees show."
It’s bad news for the whole region when jobs leave, including local institutions like Augsburg that benefit from being located in a thriving community. An increase in unemployment, poverty, and social dislocation in neighborhoods surrounding the campus would raise new challenges for the College in attracting students, faculty, and contributions.
But there’s good news, too. Some of the Twin Cities’ biggest employers aren’t going anywhere.
How can we be sure? Because “anchor” institutions like colleges, medical centers, and cultural institutions serve the people of a particular area and are in fact defined by their location and the people they serve. For example, try to imagine Fairview Hospital moving to Beijing or Augsburg to New Orleans. They would not be the same in another place because they anchor the communities in which they are located."