[vineyardmike]

There are something like 30 universities in the Boston metro, including some extremely press and wealthy ones. Universities like Harvard and MIT have sprawling research industrial complex’s beyond teaching students. And many thousands of employees, many of whom are high paid professionals.

All that to say nothing of the students. The population of Boston itself is ~600k, while the metro region has ~4M people and roughly 300k students reside in the metro. These are obviously not all local students, but students from all over the world who have come to Boston for education.

I didn’t mean directly that the schools had money, but that neighborhoods and civic fabric was built around the universities. But many do have a lot of money. Students tend not to travel far, so you get lots of self-contained neighborhoods around school. Similar to SF where the hills limit how far you’d walk.