Northeastern University of Boston may soon find a home in the Northwest. The private 113-year-old University is planning to establish a new branch campus in Seattle.

A spokeswoman for the university had few details on where the campus would be located or when it might open, but Northeastern’s Sean Gallagher tells The Seattle Times that the new campus will focus on master’s degrees in information assurance, health informatics and computer science.

“The employer community can’t find the talented workforce based on the number of graduates coming out of the existing institutions,” Gallagher told the Times.

Northeastern opened a similar branch campus in Charlotte, North Carolina this week, marking the first expansion for the school outside of Massachusetts.

Tech employers in the Seattle area have been on a rabid hunt for skilled professionals. And, as companies such as Facebook, Zynga and Salesforce.com strengthen their operations in the Seattle area, some have lamented that the existing public institutions in the state just aren’t generating enough skilled developers and programmers.

Just last month, EMC’s Isilon unit announced plans to hire an additional 200 workers, many in high-paying technical positions. Amazon.com added 8,000 workers during the third quarter and now employs more than 50,000 people.

Meanwhile, the University of Washington, Western Washington University and other state-run schools are coming under increasing pressure. In May, the technology community in the state went into an uproar when Western threatened to shut down the computer science department.

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