For a university with top-rated engineering and science programs, churning out highly educated, workforce-ready graduates is not a problem. But for the University, keeping these students in the area, or in the state, for that matter, has become a problem that we have been unable to solve.

Many of these successful graduates choose either to move to more technology-oriented parts of the country — Silicon Valley to work at major companies like Google or Apple and the East Coast with the lure of tech start-up companies — or returning to home countries like China and Korea. In the computer science department alone, 32 percent of graduates move to California for work, according to the Chicago Tribune. Clearly, the University, as a public, state-funded land grant institution has some serious brain drain issues.

But last week, an announcement was made that could direct some of this outgoing traffic back to Illinois, specifically the Chicago area. A private but University-affiliated company, to be called UI Labs, will open a tech center in or near Chicago’s Loop, an idea location for the marriage of big Chicago business with the technological services the center will provide. 

As this entire project will be funded privately, the University and the state will have their hands clean of any initial debt UI Labs may incur being a new business, which is great news for Illinois, just downgraded by Standard & Poor to have the worst debt rating in the nation.

Additionally, since the affiliation with the University isn’t as stringent as it would be if the project were publicly funded, it opens up opportunities for research partnerships with Northwestern University and the University of Michigan, adding additional notoriety and idea pools to the project. The partnerships can help enhance our position as a formidable research institution, despite the school being relatively in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by cornfields. Key pieces of technology, like the Blue Waters Supercomputer at the National Center for Supercomputing, and companies in Research Park are essentially surrounded by farmland — a truth we all acknowledge.

Not only is this project the perfect boost for the University, it could also help bolster the state economy in years to come, making Chicago a hub for technology and business partnerships, just as the Bay Area and East Coast powerhouses like Boston and New York are.

The solid financial backing of several deep-pocketed sponsors is just an added plus, making the $20 million first-year goal attainable and exciting.