UC Berkeley Has Job Growth Potential On the Horizon

Thanks Thomas Hawk for this picure of UC Berkelely’s Campus

Last Monday, the University of California at Berkeley received a gift of $113,000,000. The William and Flora Hewlett foundation has given UC Berkeley the largest single gift in the University’s history. The offer was given with the intent to keep UC Berkeley competitive with other private universities around the country.

Up until they received this gift, the public university struggled to compete with private universities that were receiving 20% per annum increases on their endowments. The state governments could just not keep up with the private money that other schools were receiving. The gift from the Hewlett Foundation is a challenge grant that will match other private donations dollar for dollar. This means once the challenge is met UC Berkeley will be infused with a total of $220,000,000 of capital for supporting new faculty positions. To fully understand the impact of this endowment, think about how it will make up a nearly 50% increase to the universities current $468,000,000 faculty chair funding.

So, how will this affect our real estate economy? This money will fund 100 new professors with competitive faculty salaries. It will infuse Berkeley with many long term well paid home buyers. New top tier Bay Area job growth is a good sign for the future of our local real estate economy. Many professors also work on new development projects for companies throughout the Bay Area and they bring new business ideas and development to the Bay Area as a whole.