Is Boston a top college town?
By david_yamada - 5/20/09 - 2:49 pm
At least one educational counselor believes so:
This list would not be complete without Boston. Boston has more than 100 colleges and 100,000 students in its surrounding area, so there's no need for a car when exploring this town of 600,000.
This assessment will not warm the hearts of Universal Hub denizens who have been dealing with noisy undergrads...
Amherst(!!!), Berkeley, Montreal, and Washington D.C. are nos. 1-4, with the Hub coming in at 5.
Personally, I'd opt for NYC. But I'm sure that Madison, Austin, and a few others have their fans.
Comments
This list would not be complete without Boston?
Nice of them to think of us.
Not quite an advertorial
But looks like a pulleditoutofmybottomtorial.
Hey, any time you make up a ranking, people who make the cut will link to you. And some who don't will link to you in indignation. (Any NYC doesn't need the coddling nor does it care.)
I think the term college
I think the term college town should focus on places where the college(s) is the town. While Boston is spotted with schools its not an absolute domination. Meanwhile Amherst is essentially a college that happens to house other people as well.
Additional criterion
The end of the article says that a college town should present the opportunity for students to interact with students at other institutions besides their own, thus excluding such otherwise plausible choices as Austin, Ann Arbor, Madison, etc.
Aw, c'mon
Show ACC some love.
Towns
I think the term college town should focus on places that are actually towns - places larger than villages but smaller than cities. There's no official distinction between cities and towns in the US, but I certainly think of them as different things. I don't think any place with a population over half a million, or which is a regional metropolis, should properly be considered a town, and therefore it can't be a college town.
A college town is a kind of oasis. Anybody you meet on the street, who wasn't born there, is associated with the college in some way; otherwise, they wouldn't be there. In a real college town, the college dominates the town. The bars are full of college students. (Oh, wait, that part is Boston).
I guess the point is that whereas Boston is undeniably influenced by having a huge number of students in proportion to the population, giving the whole city a collegy kind of feel, it's not nearly the same thing as a place like Amherst. Most of us are here in Boston working in businesses that might benefit from the presence of college and universities, but which nonetheless are part of actual separate industries. Boston has a healthcare industry, a biotech industry, a defense tech industry... A real college town is a place you pretty much have to leave after college if you want a real job, unless you're working at the college.
Washington, DC is right out. The majority of people in DC have absolutely nothing to do with any university. Higher education is by no means the biggest thing going in DC. There's this whole government thingie there. Likewise Montreal is a city in its own right. Calling it a college town is silly.
I've lived both Amherst and Berkeley (and yes, in both cases because of the colleges). But the reason I live in Boston now isn't for the colleges, it's for the jobs. Besides Amherst, the only one on this list that should really be considered a college town is Berkeley.
The editors set up a criterion that excluded most real college towns from their list: most real college towns have only one college. A better criterion would be percentage of population employed by the college/university. What she's set up isn't really a list of top college towns but just a list of nice places to go to college.
College town vs. college in a town vs. urban college
I agree that a lot of us associate "college town" with a place that is defined by a college or university, like an Amherst, Berkeley, or Bloomington.
There's another less wonderful spinoff on that: the college in a town: I did undergrad at Valparaiso University, a smallish Lutheran-affiliated university in NW Indiana, located in a town of the same name. While the classroom education was excellent (and it took me a long time to appreciate just how good it was), student life was very dull. Many moons later, I still refer to Valpo as a hotbed of student rest. There was little university-town cultural interaction, unless you include the homecoming Popcorn Parade that celebrates hometown legend Orville Redenbacher.
When I got to New York for law school, I thought the keys of the cultural kingdom had just been handed to me...
Putting myself back in time as a college student, I regard Greater Boston as a college town on steroids, a cross between a "college town" and a big city. I think it makes for a pretty neat combination for someone who wants something of both worlds.
Colleges in remote parts of a town
Waltham has two colleges, but neither is anywhere near downtown, and it has a lot of non-college related businesses (think high tech along 128), so you never think of it as a "college town."
another vote for nyc here too
I would say NYC 1 and Boston 2
Nice to see the 5 colleges
Nice to see the 5 colleges up in Amherst get the props they deserve. Great area too!
/Umass grad
Agreed!
I was just out that way last weekend for Hampshire Commencement. It's such a nice area.
spinal tap
Ian Faith: The Boston gig has been cancelled...
David St. Hubbins: What?
Ian Faith: Yeah. I wouldn't worry about it though, it's not a big college town.
(from imdb)
You beat me to it! NYC?
You beat me to it!
NYC? Apart from Columbia, NYU and Cooper Union, what else is there? Are we talking colleges strictly within city limits, or the Metro area? If the latter, Boston has NYC beat.
In New York City, try...
Within city limits, try the New School for Social Research, Fordham, St. John's, the City University system, etc. etc. A real nice mix of schools drawing from local, regional, national, and int'l student pools.
Personally, NYC would've been too much for me as a undergrad, but for law school (NYU) I was ready for it and it was incredible.
Harvard and MIT certainly give (Greater) Boston the nod for prestige, but for a city-as-campus experience, New York has the edge. That said, Boston strikes me as being much more of a "college town" than New York, and life here is typically more manageable for a young person coming over from the burbs, hinterlands, or places overseas. I would've liked Boston a lot as a collegian coming from northwest Indiana...
As an aside, I think Berkeley is awesome, even if I tire of some of its post-60s schtick.
I was just wondering, (as Barnicle might say),
do any of these towns have less of a clue about their major industry? By this I mean that NY, Montreal, etc. are much less dependent on colleges as an economic engine. (OK, Amherst is an exception). Despite that, our city government doesn't have a clue about what's taking place on campuses in particular and among that demographic in general, unless the cops are called. (E.g., Houston is an energy economy. Education is as important to us as oil is to them. Why then do we have episodes where Menino exposes himself to be less in touch than the mayor at Faber College? Could the Aqua Teen Hunger Force kerfuffle happen anywhere else? Think folks in Houston know the price of oil?)
good question
Though I fully understand the frustrations of residents who must deal with the aftereffects of the latest rounds of collegiate binge drinking, higher ed is one of the region's major industries. I don't know, for example, if Menino has a higher ed liaison within his inner circle of staff. (If not, he should.)
You get extra credit for mentioning Faber College!
Menino's idea of interacting
Menino's idea of interacting with local colleges is to shriek at them about how they're not building enough dorms. Emerson was so pissed about it (with reason, where the hell could they build anyway?!) they threatened to move to LAWRENCE, leaving a couple of million square feet on the Common vacant. Funny how quickly Menino backed off once that option was on the table...
A fact-free comment
1) Ray Flynn was mayor of Boston when Emerson considered moving to Lawrence
2) Emerson at that time was located in Back Bay, not in its current campus around the Common.
Here! Here!
Furthermore, the city would likely find itself in an easier bargaining position with regards to quality of life issues (like noise, trash, etc.) if it realized this. I believe the phrase is "2 Way Street." Instead we get, "let's end PILOT payments."
Personally, as a college
Personally, as a college student, having so many other schools around is very cool. That being said, I love when everyone else goes home for the summer.
ummm... shouldn't that be Cambridge?
As ShadyMilkMan points out "I think the term college town should focus on places where the college(s) is the town" - sounds a lot more like Cambridge than Boston.
I would sign onto Cambridge
I would sign onto Cambridge as a college town over Boston. Everything in Cambridge seems to be college, college related or college dependent.
And in Cambridge...
...let's not forget Lesley University and Cambridge College, two schools that serve important niches. (Though I wish Lesley would leave the Japanese store alone...)
Cambridge vs Boston
Cambridge: Harvard, MIT, Lesley, Cambridge College, Episcopal Divinity School, Longy School of Music
Boston: Harvard Medical+Dental, Harvard Business, Tufts Medical+Dental, Suffolk, Emerson, Boston University, Boston College, Northeastern, UMass-Boston, Simmons, Emmanuel, Wheelock, Wentworth, School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Mass. College of Art, Art Institute of Boston (until they move to Cambridge with the rest of Lesley), Boston Conservatory, New England Conservatory, Berklee College of Music
I'm sure I've left out a bunch of more obscure schools, but Boston wins this competition on numbers (of both colleges and students).
If broken down per capita
If broken down per capita Cambridge has much more in the way of college students.
Except ...
It seems that half of MIT's and Harvard's graduate students live in Dorchester now.
Having attended college in a
Having attended college in a college town (Chapel Hill, NC Go Tarheels!) and in a college city (Northeastern) there's a difference between the two and both are separate entities. Boston is not a town. This list loses credibility for mixing the two.
A college town has pros and cons compared to a college city (and vice-versa). Rank them separately next time MSN.
If it's college towns...
How about Claremont?