Northeastern University is a private research university founded in 1898 in Boston, best known for pioneering large-scale cooperative education (co-op), where students alternate semesters of classroom study with paid, full-time professional work. Under president Joseph E. Aoun, it has grown into a 13-campus global system spanning the U.S., Canada and the U.K., enrolling roughly 38,000 students and earning R1 doctoral research status. Its model fuses experiential learning, industry partnership and applied research in fields from AI to network science.
Joseph E. Aoun is the seventh president of Northeastern University and the author of Robot-Proof, the book that named the AI-era reinvention of higher education. A Lebanese-born linguist trained under Noam Chomsky, he has spent nearly two decades turning a single Boston commuter campus into a 13-campus global university system spanning North America and the UK, expanding co-op placements into more than 140 countries and growing external research funding sevenfold.