Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
• towns strongly influenced by the university in their midst
• towns whose institutions...likes stores, restaurants, entertainment reflect the university's location
• towns where the university is a large part of their own identity
• towns where the university is big enough to generate the above
• no big cities (Minneapolis is not a college town; either is Seattle)
Most of these towns, I would argue, are towns where state universities are located, where large enrollments and a true connection to their state, gives them so much of that college town feel.
The list is endless and this one is hardly conclusive, but State College, Charlottesville, Chapel Hill, Athens, Gainesville, Tuscaloosa, Oxford, Ann Arbor, Bloomington, Madison, Iowa City, Columbia, Lawrence, Boulder, Berkeley, Eugene,etc.
But for private universities, I think maybe only one (at least in my mind) jumps out at you: Princeton. Cambridge, for example, is well known, but doesn't come across collegiate in the same way (to me)
Are there college towns of private universities that share the characteristics of college towns of public universities I listed above?
Ithaca(Cornell is a hybrid private school with state programs and Ithaca College is private)to a large degree and to a lesser degree, Syracuse(not really a college town, but has a college town section of town).
Perhaps Hanover NH(Dartmouth); parts of New Haven(around Yale) and Providence(College Hill neighborhood near Brown) too.
Sewanee, Tennessee. The Episcopal university is so integrated with the community that no one even refers to the school by its actual name (The University of the South) but as simply Sewanee. The university and town are located in the middle of a 13,000 acre forest on top of a mountain between Chattanooga and Nashville.
Sewanee, Tennessee. The Episcopal university is so integrated with the community that no one even refers to the school by its actual name (The University of the South) but as simply Sewanee. The university and town are located in the middle of a 13,000 acre forest on top of a mountain between Chattanooga and Nashville.
Places like Tuscaloosa Morgantown Columbus and Austin don't really exist in private school cities.
Providence and New Haven certainly are not good examples. Those are white tower institutions in poor cities that are largely disconnected from the elites in those buildings. No tailgate culture no culture of local kids coming to the schools, no Yale and Brown merch being sold all over. It's more like a big non profit in terms of influence not an integral part of culture identity and history of the people in town.
Private schools just don't get quite as large as state-supported ones; their empire-building tends to steer towards selectivity rather than scale. Another factor is that rural college towns are pretty much a contrivance of early American government being (stolen-)land-rich but cash-poor, and so when they spent on higher ed it was with land. Hence the 18th-century land-grant charters for UGA and UNC, and later the federal Morrill Act. Everywhere else in the world, universities thrived in wealthy cities, and America's largest private institutions seem to follow that pattern.
Hence, the largest and most influential private universities tend to be in larger cities, but they do often dominate their respective neighborhoods. The most collegiate parts of Boston (towards the southwest, from the Fenway to Allston) are dominated by private institutions like BU and Northeastern. UMass Boston is way off on a peninsula in the southeast corner of the city.
An exception might be for religious colleges. The country's largest private college is BYU, but I can't say that Provo strikes me as a super collegiate place. Same goes for, say, Liberty (which claims 110,000 students!) and Lynchburg. Besides Notre Dame and Seton Hall, it's interesting that most large Catholic colleges are in big cities, perhaps following American Catholics' more urban settlement.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ckhthankgod
Perhaps Hanover NH(Dartmouth)
Given the smaller size of private colleges, you'll have to think of much smaller towns and smaller colleges. Hanover, Princeton, and Palo Alto* at the high end; in the middle, lots of liberal arts colleges situated in tiny college towns, from Williamstown to Oberlin to Northfield to Claremont.*
* You can't blame these towns for being swallowed up by Californian sprawl.
I can think of places that might qualify except strangely for #2.
Durham, Winston-Salem in NC, South Bend, IN, Waco, Tx, Tulsa, OK (if Tulsa isn't too big a city),
All have division 1 athletic schools. None have a lot of retail and shops located immediately adjacent to the university.
And I would have to disagree on BYU in Provo. Seems very much like the OP is asking about. In fact there are about 10 places you can get a milkshake within a block of campus.
Ithaca(Cornell is a hybrid private school with state programs and Ithaca College is private)to a large degree and to a lesser degree, Syracuse(not really a college town, but has a college town section of town).
Perhaps Hanover NH(Dartmouth); parts of New Haven(around Yale) and Providence(College Hill neighborhood near Brown) too.
I’d give Ithica full credit as private because its land grant portion is very small. And as OP, I should have thought of Itacha
Evanston (Northwestern)? Hanover (Dartmouth)? Stanford, CA? You're probably gonna get this with larger and/or more prestigious private schools.
I’d give Evanston a big edge over Palo Alto. Northwestern is right in the heart of Evanston, founded Evanston, and John Evans was one of NU’s founders. The south end of the campus is directly across the street from downtown.
Stanford is its own municipality, part of the university. While one could say DT PA is across the street and Caltrain tracks from the university, it really isn’t close to it as Stanford’s main entrance is longer than any other university, a long stretch of green space
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
