Silber said that B.U.’s faculty and staff have been reluctant to settle in Boston because of its failing school system.

“If they live in Boston they have to send their children to private schools,” he said. “[Boston] will have to improve its school system vastly beyond what it’s done so far.”

Silber also said the quality of Boston’s public education has affected the university’s ability to fill spots reserved for local students.

“We have had to lower our standards of admission to admit those students,” he said. “There are structural problems in the Boston schools that need to be corrected.”

And while he noted the high number of Harvard undergraduates who already volunteer in area school districts, Summers said that universities and city governments should take more aggressive actions to improve local education.

“I don’t think any of us can rest easy with the state of the schools in Boston or in Cambridge,” he said.

Harvard’s Vice President for Government, Community and Public Affairs Alan J. Stone said he was pleased by the high attendance at yesterday’s breakfast of business leaders.

“This was a good reflection of the importance of this study,” he said. “You could just tell the interest in the subject.”

But one area businessperson said he thinks universities could do more to boost the region’s more overlooked companies.

Bruce C. Bolling, executive director of the Massachusetts Alliance for Small Contractors, Inc., who attended the breakfast, said area universities should focus more on working with minority and women-owned businesses.

“A rising tide does not lift all boats,” he said. “There is an under-utilization of minority and women-owned enterprises that [universities] do business with. They should be more reflective of all the diversity of the region.”

—Staff writer Claire A. Pasternack can be reached at cpastern@fas.harvard.edu.