The middle of January is a time for getting back to normalcy. The hustle and bustle of the holidays and New Year’s celebrations are over. We settle back into the normal flow of work and recreation. Students at all levels return to regular schedules of school and extracurricular activities.
You many not think of Buffalo Niagara as a “college town,” but we enjoy a concentration of colleges and universities in urban, suburban, and rural areas across the region. This week undergraduate and graduate students returned to campus to begin the spring semester. Seniors will be completing their final course work and exams before entering the labor pool after finding their first “real” job.
But for now, they’re comfortably in the educational pipeline we so often reference when boasting about the region, because it truly is an asset for our region and our region’s employers.
Buffalo Niagara…
Invest Buffalo Niagara represents the eight counties of Western New York, a geography that includes 21 colleges and universities with nearly 110,000 students enrolled annually. The State University of New York (SUNY) University at Buffalo, the flagship university of the SUNY system, enrolls over 30,000 undergraduate and graduate students and confers over 7,500 degrees and certificates year-over-year.
…And beyond
While our organization is tasked with business attraction for the eight counties of Western New York, it does not mean our education pipeline is limited to those boundaries. While a labor shed of existing workers is limited by geography, commute times, and other considerations, employers in Buffalo Niagara can recruit prospective employees from colleges and universities across Upstate New York and beyond.
With a more macroscopic view, our educational pipeline widens vastly. Within 100 miles of downtown Buffalo there are 37 colleges and universities in New York and Pennsylvania. Included within the group are three distinguished schools ranked in the Top 100 Colleges and Universities by US News and World Report: University of Rochester, University at Buffalo, and Rochester Institute of Technology.
The robust educational pipeline in Buffalo Niagara is yet another advantage for businesses located in our region as the ability to recruit and retain top talent from local colleges and universities is a vital source of skilled workers.
If access to highly-educated and motivated employees is a major driver for your business expansion plans, we encourage you to come grow your business with us.