John Sexton, the president of NYU, looks into his crystal ball for 2005 and predicts that the FIRE sector (finance, insurance, real estate) will become less important to the future of New York City. Instead, more attention will be given to the ICE sector (intellectual, cultural, educational).

Sexton explains: "We have more students in higher education per capita than any other American city. Too few of us know and celebrate that New York is the leading importer of college students from the other 49 states. This concentration of intellectual activity displays itself vividly in science: over 100 Nobel Laureates in science; 45 active members of the National Academy of Sciences in bioscience alone; the highest concentration of science students and post doctoral students; and more Ph.D.s granted in life science than 48 states. In short, we are the educational capital of the world."