This is a telling quote...
"Yet another looked at colleges established in the United States from the mid-19th to the mid-20th century. Counties where colleges arose generated 32 percent more patents than places that missed out. This effect was mainly driven by migration: College towns drew innovative people.
But research shows that the impact depends both on the quality of the school and on the attributes of the place. “In general, I think the bigger impact for a smaller city is likely to be if there is already some pre-existing activity to build on, and if there is some reason to think that the area might be attractive otherwise,” Mr. Bartik said.
Consider San Diego. One of the nation’s leading innovation centers, it built much of its prosperity on the University of California, San Diego. In 2011, the university produced 80 master’s and Ph.D. degrees in fields related to wireless technology, up fivefold from 1991. Between 1985 and 2001, its alumni were founders of 16 telecom firms in the area, including Franklin Antonio, a co-founder of Qualcomm, the city’s most valuable company and the world’s leading maker of smartphone chips.
By contrast, Mr. Bartik said, “sticking a high-tech institute in the middle of rural Idaho might not have multiplier effects if there is nothing to build on."
The impact that a university like in Stillwater could have had in Tulsa would have been far greater for the state (and Tulsa) if it had been in or close to the city (The university in Norman is about the same distance to downtown OKC as Downtown Tulsa is to Downtown BA.)