More Washington University technology grads stay in St. Louis
May 23, 2013 4:57 pm • By David Nicklaus
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
An aerial view Brookings Hall at Washington University on March 11, 2011.
Washington University played a big role in the development of computing, and some old hands are organizing a 50th anniversary reunion this weekend for the university's Computer Labs. They'll be swapping stories about many accomplishments, including early work on the LINC, a forerunner of today's personal computers.
Jerry Cox, a senior professor of computer science and engineering, emailed me about the festivities, and somehow our correspondence turned into a discussion of the university's impact on St. Louis' technology work force. Cox told me he thinks more graduates of his program are finding opportunities in St. Louis, and he obtained some numbers from the school's alumni office to back up that intuition.
Between 1992 and 2001, the school turned out 471 computer science and engineering graduates, and 25 percent of them stayed in St. Louis. Thirteen percent went to the San Francisco area, including Silicon Valley.
Between 2002 and 2012, 677 students obtained CSE degrees. Thirty-three percent found jobs in St. Louis, and just 11 percent went to San Francisco. That's a "serious fraction" staying here, Cox notes, even as Washington U. recruits more students from distant parts of the country.
The difference is probably due to increased opportunity. In the 1990s, a young engineer had to go to Silicon Valley or Seattle to work for an interesting technology startup; St. Louis is now home to firms like Lockerdome. Larger companies like Boeing and World Wide Technology also are hiring more technology workers here.
Boeing, by the way, was the biggest employer of the CSE graduates between 2002 and 2012, followed by Microsoft, Washington University itself and Google.
Cox himself is no slouch at the startup game. He launched Growth Networks, which was acquired by Cisco Systems in 2000 at the very peak of the Internet bubble, and is now working on Blendics, which is developing ways to speed processing on computer chips.
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