Will Half a Billion Buy a B.A. in the Hamptons?

Word this week of a $500 million gift to Stony Brook University (a State University of New York branch on Long Island) can’t help but have East End residents wondering: Will this bring sustained academic life to town? For all its riches, the Hamptons does not have higher ed. The main Stony Brook campus is the closest thing, an hour’s drive away. There’s a tangled history to why, going back at least to the late 1950s and efforts by civic boosters to lure Adelphi College (as it was then) to open a satellite on an old estate in the Sebonac area of Southampton. That led to nothing, so by 1963, the town burghers had instead brought Long Island University, on Nassau County’s so-called Gold Coast, to grounds in Shinnecock Hills. That branch–Southampton College–opened to much fanfare, only to face repeated financial troubles over four decades. Finally it closed in 2005, the remains soon to be swallowed up by Stony Brook U, initially with high hopes (again) but ultimately with only marine studies and graduate arts offerings. Budget woes were blamed. The campus, though still operational, had frayed to the point that influential local legislator Fred Thiele (one of Southampton College’s most notable alums) in February branded Stony Brook a “slumlord.” But now, with half a billion dollars swelling its endowment, who knows where old ambitions will lead?

https://www.newsday.com/long-island/education/stony-brook-simons-foundation-500-million-gift-grfy0to6