The Death of Brooklyn Poly

We all know how badly technology is decaying in the US, and we also know how very little most people care about it. But you do, if you’ve got any reason at all to look at this blog. Here’s another road sign on the route to perdition: the demise of an historic technological university.

The Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, lately going by several other names as it underwent structural changes leading to its forthcoming dissolution, was one of several specialized colleges in the New York City area that arose from the industrialization of the 19th century, and the enormous need for education in the sciences and engineering. For many years it also served the particularly urban need for night school as working people tried to improve themselves and get better jobs, or ones relevant to new industries.

The very focused, and often down and dirty role of Poly and similar institutions was a necessary component to the growth of science and technology. These schools did not transition, like MIT or Stanford, to eminence through strong government or industrial linkages; in effect they missed the boat, over and over again, through mismanagement, wrong locations, or simple lack of resources. However, the story of the poor immigrant, or the kid from the projects, who cobbled up a career the hard way, taking the subway to a better life , is a good story, and an American wonder.

Now, this school, that I attended more because of full support than anything else, is headed for history, as another institution, also having failed to subsist on technology, has grasped the opportunity to, in brief, trash Poly in order to get its newly valuable urban real estate.

Poly was very early in high vacuum and thin films, and also had enviable strength in x-ray diffraction, polymer science, and even microwaves. Graduates fanned out to staff a considerable industrial expansion around New York and, especially, Long Island. Up to the 1960’s the area was known for emergent technology and related manufacturing. Then, as always happens in the US, industry moved westward, California captured the microelectronic banner, and factories began to close. Powerhouse cities, such as Bridgeport, Connecticut, went dark, and the aircraft and space industries of Long Island fractioned into yet more suburban housing sprawl.

There was nothing unusual about this progression; it had happened almost two centuries ago in Vermont and Maine, and left behind vast brick factories, hydro dams, and suddenly irrelevant educational institutions. Today, one can buy a big mill less than a two hour drive from Manhattan for taxes due, or less than the cost of a new roof. So there shouldn’t be anything sad about Poly selling out; after all, it didn’t stand a chance of reviving, did it?

Here’s the rub, and the reason for this post. With no national goal-setting in technology, the US is blindly pissing away its former leadership in most of the important areas, is graduating an ever-diminishing fraction of the people most critical to the present economy, let alone that of the future, and, as long as profit can somehow be made on short-term, dangerous deals, our country is seemingly complacent about the entire prospect. A prospect, I think, whose side-effects include the loss of manufacturing, most of the middle class, military credibility, and any chance of 21st century leadership.

We should regard our educational base, as underfunded and scattershot as it is, as the most vital resource for reversing the technological degeneration. Every school, like Poly, that can’t pay its light bill, or compete for the bright kids with Wall St. , is an endangered species needing protection. We blow the dollar equivalent of one medium size university each day in Iraq, but don’t seem to notice the missing engineers, the failed startups, the crumbling infrastructure, the moribund federal research budget, and here, the loss of opportunity.

On one level, we might call Poly a justifiable write-off; an organization that ignored a hundred important chances for success, a weak sister, a runt calf, a bad gambler, something that deserves to go away. On another level, though, it’s a demonstration that the rest of us are so blind to the needs of the future that we can’t see what we’re giving up.

UPDATE  JULY 1   The Deed is Done!  Poly is gone.  I suppose that there’s a lot of letterhead to mulch, including blank diplomas.