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Nature 446, 968-970 (26 April 2007) | doi:10.1038/446968a; Published online 25 April 2007; Corrected 1 May 2007

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US higher education: The Arizona experiment

Colin Macilwain1

  1. Colin Macilwain is a reporter and editor for Nature based in Edinburgh.

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A shift in population, money and political influence to America's 'sunbelt states' is helping to reshape its research universities. The first of two features looks at the far-reaching ambitions of Arizona State University. The second asks whether a rush to create extra medical schools could spread the region's resources too thinly.

It is a hot February morning in the Arizona desert, and Walter Cronkite, the legendary American newscaster, is straining every muscle in his 90-year-old body to break the hard ground with a golden shovel.Cronkite is in Phoenix to start construction on a new home for America's biggest journalism school, in America's largest university, in what will soon be its third-largest city.