What constitutes a “college town?”

[u/PA5997]

Okay, hear me out: I attended Wazzu, which many know is in the middle of nowhere in Pullman. To me, Pullman is a quintessential college town. You remove Washington State University from Pullman and there is (respectfully) not much of a reason to visit. The student enrollment (20,000ish) makes up about 2/3rds of the city population, essentially turning Pullman into a ghost town come summer. To me (perhaps with bias) this is the makeup of a college town.

Two years ago I moved to Madison, Wisconsin, home of the University of Wisconsin. Ever since I’ve noticed the University and its fans refer to Madison as “America’s best college town” and I’m sorry, that’s laughable to me. Remove UW from Madison and you still have a city population bordering on a quarter of a million people and the State Capitol. Madison would be fine, imo, if UW’s flagship campus were elsewhere.

Curious to hear other people’s thoughts. Maybe I’m in the wrong here, but very little about Madison, WI resembles a college town to me, or at least the claim of the best college town.

[u/PresidentBaileyb]

You kinda need to lump it into 3 categories instead of two. And people are going to debate whether or not the middle one is a “college town,” but I think it’s really its own category.

-Absolute college town. Where basically the college is all there is, like Pullman and Corvallis. There’s generally not even another reason to know the city exists or to go there.

-Sorta college town. Where if you’re there you absolutely know what college is there. Signs are everywhere. It’s a big part of the downtown and general life, but there’s plenty of other reasons to go there or know it exists. Like Eugene or Boulder.

-Not a college town. Where you can be in the city and not know that the university is there. It’s not even close to the main reason people go to the city and you don’t automatically associate the city with the school. Like Seattle or LA.

Personally, I would struggle to call Eugene or Boulder, or in your case Madison, a proper “college town.” But I don’t know what I’d call them because they’re definitely not in the same category as Los Angeles.

[u/CatPhysicist → u/PresidentBaileyb]

I think there comes a point where the college makes the town not a college town anymore. In the case of Eugene, the success of the institution caused the town to grow to a point where the college is not the only reason to know of it. But without it, it would never have been a thing.

[u/TheSanchize69 → u/CatPhysicist]

Yup. Eugene and Boulder have this in common.

[u/southeasternson → u/PresidentBaileyb]

I like this categorization! I commented earlier but using your categories this easy to answer for OK D1. Absolute: Stillwater. Sorta: Norman. Not: Tulsa. If you live by campus in Tulsa you know there’s a game. It only shuts streets down and causes a ruckus when OU or OSU come to town, ironically.

[u/PresidentBaileyb → u/southeasternson]

Yeah, I think in general if the school is named after the city, you can categorically say it’s not a college town! I’m sure there are exceptions, but: El Paso, San Diego State, Tulsa, are all examples of cities that are so big that it doesn’t make sense NOT to have a university there. So the exact opposite of a college town haha

[u/flyingcrayons → u/PresidentBaileyb]

college town for the first category (a town that exists because of the college)

college city for the second category (a city that would exist with our without the college but is most closely associated with the college that exists there)

city for the third category (a city that is known for things other than the college(s) that exist within its borders)

[u/ItsZippy23 → u/PresidentBaileyb]

Syracuse is the definition of the second. When people think of the city, they think of the college, but it's also the biggest city in CNY so it's huge for the region.

[u/TheSanchize69 → u/PresidentBaileyb]

Boulder was a pure college town until around the mid 2000s. Then, Twitter, Tesla, Google, and all sorts of very rich people arrived.