What do I do with these billions of dollars in the endowment? Ah yes buy some really expensive real estate, and continue the whole artificial scarcity that is my brand.

The actual announcement by Vandy - https://news.vanderbilt.edu/2026/01/13/vanderbilt-university...

Includes a lot of info that the WSJ article glazed over (eg. "Vanderbilt’s planned San Francisco campus expects to serve about 1,000 undergraduate and graduate students")

Looking at Vandy NYC [0], I'm guessing they're trying to pull a Wharton@SF and expand their BSchool's presence in the Bay (and thus enhancing their alumni pool) along with subsuming CCA which has been under tough financial strain for the past few years.

I'm also guessing the Nashville moniker is negatively impacting undergrad yield (eg. I and my peers didn't even apply to CS@GT for undergrad because of racial, LGBTQ+, and body autonomy worries in Georgia and I know for a fact that Duke has been facing issues with yield protection as well)

[0] - https://www.vanderbilt.edu/nyc/