Public and private universities from across the country are racing to open satellite campuses around the White House and the U.S. Capitol, transforming empty office space in the nation’s capital into a public policy mega-campus.

In Dupont Circle recently, Princeton University launched its School of Public and International Affairs at a rooftop gala on May 10, and the University of Southern California celebrated the opening of its USC Capital Campus at an April event that featured the Trojan marching band.

That brings the tally of outside universities operating “Washington semesters” and summers — mostly in foreign and domestic affairs — to 37. That’s in addition to the nine universities that are D.C. “natives.”

USC officials say their $50 million, 60,000-square foot campus will host classes ranging from political science to artificial intelligence. It will also feature talks by government and business leaders, and offer networking events for more than 6,000 alumni in the area.

“We intend to expand opportunities for students in multiple disciplines and USC schools,” Ishwar K. Puri, USC senior vice president of research and innovation, told The Washington Times. “For instance, our student journalists could spend time learning to cover legislation and politics at a national level while taking courses with experienced policy experts and engaging communicators and journalists.”

Non-local universities now occupy roughly 1 million square feet in the District and have gobbled up property in an otherwise “challenging market for office space,” according to Jones Lang LaSalle, a commercial real estate firm offering market analyses and listings for the startup campuses.

The satellites have clustered between Massachusetts and Pennsylvania avenues around the White House and Capitol, according to Jones Lang LaSalle. Most are in Dupont Circle, Logan Circle and Foggy Bottom neighborhoods of Northwest Washington.

“It’s been growing in the last 10 years. Those neighborhoods are at the crossroads of the downtown central business districts and are very exciting,” said Martine Combal, a senior vice president at Jones Lang LaSalle. “It’s not traditional commuter office space, but a different set of people and hours bringing additional diversity to downtown.”

Schools with satellite campuses offer space for events, student housing, federal affairs offices and lobbying. Most tap national public policy experts as professors and offer a “D.C. semester” that counts an internship as academic credit.

Others lease administrative offices to support students studying in the District through partnerships with local internship programs.

Seven of Washington’s homegrown universities are in Northwest: American University, Gallaudet University, George Washington University, Georgetown University, Howard University, National Defense University and the University of the District of Columbia.

In Northeast, the Catholic University of America and Trinity Washington University are two private Catholic institutions located close to each other on Michigan Avenue.

Of the 37 non-local colleges with satellite campuses in the District, 32 have landed in Northwest.

The University of Notre Dame Keough School of Global Affairs and the University of Maryland Department of Economics, which offers a master’s in applied econometrics focusing on public policy, share the same address at 1400 16th Street NW.

Pepperdine University, a Christian school in California, established a Washington, D.C., semester nearly 30 years ago. Pepperdine’s campus is on Pennsylvania Avenue, three blocks from the White House and a short walk from the World Bank, the State Department and the Federal Reserve. Administrators say more than 70 students from six international degree programs intern at nearby embassies and think tanks annually.

“At first, it started fairly small, for students interested in public service and politics,” Brian Swarts, director of Pepperdine’s Washington DC Program, said in an email. “Over time, as the global vision of the university and our students has grown, so has Pepperdine’s presence in D.C.”

Other non-local universities that have set up shop in Northwest: Arizona State University, Boston University, Brigham Young University, Brown University, Carnegie Mellon University, Claremont McKenna University, Cornell University, Dickinson College, Drexel University, Duke University, Florida International University, James Madison University, Johns Hopkins University, Lake Forest College, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, New York University, Northwestern University, Ohio State University, Ohio University, the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, Stanford University, Syracuse University, Texas A&M University, the College of William and Mary, the University of California, the University of Southern California, the University of Texas Austin and Wake Forest University.

Syracuse officials say they came to Washington in 1990 to help graduates more easily find government jobs. The university’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs has consistently been ranked as the nation’s top public administration program by U.S. News and World Report.

“For that reason, it makes practical sense for us to be in D.C.,” said Syracuse Vice Chancellor Mike Haynie.

Offering a “Washington, D.C. experience” helps Syracuse compete for students as fewer high school graduates attend college and universities face the prospect of bankruptcy, he added in an email.

“I believe that many institutions are looking to the future and are concerned about what’s ahead,” Mr. Haynie said. “Today there are approximately four million fewer traditional-aged students enrolled in America’s four-year colleges and universities as compared to 10 years ago.”

The remaining five satellites have students in Northeast. They include Central Michigan University, Hillsdale College, Marquette University and the University of Georgia.

Michigan State University offers students a spring semester seminar and internship program through the Washington Center, a nonprofit located in the Northeast neighborhood of NoMa not far from Gallaudet. The public university also leases administrative space in Southeast.

Hillsdale, a conservative Christian campus in Michigan, founded an academic center in 2010 and later established the Van Andel Graduate School of Government.

“Those [other] schools are all here to be near power and feed at the government trough,” Matthew Spalding, Van Andel’s dean, told The Times. “At Hillsdale, we look at it very differently. We are here not to adapt to government’s modern ways or to lobby for its favor or any of its funds, but to teach…about the true governing principles and practices at the heart of American constitutionalism.”

According to academics, the popularity of off-campus studies in the nation’s capital goes back to 1948 when American University launched its Washington Semester Program. Gradually, outside colleges started their own D.C. programs.

“What has happened since is that with the huge amounts of government funding coming out of DC, some colleges have realized that by setting up their own programs in Washington they are in a position through student internships to access important decision points,” said Robert A. Heineman, a retired political science professor at the University of Illinois.

Several higher education associations maintain offices in Dupont Circle to lobby Congress for tax dollars, noted Peter Wood, president of the conservative National Association of Scholars.

“American higher education is a special interest group with much to gain from lobbying the federal government and working with federal agencies to advance its collective agenda,” said Mr. Wood, a former associate provost at Boston University. “The students are an informal army of unpaid lobbyists.”

• Sean Salai can be reached at ssalai@washingtontimes.com.