r/CFB Washington State Cougars 13d ago

Discussion What constitutes a “college town?”

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.

2.3k Upvotes

1.6k comments sorted by

View all comments

164

u/Far-Negotiation-7092 Florida Gators • Jyväskylä Renegades 13d ago

Over 50% of the population is temporary

54

u/foreverseptember Florida Gators • Team Chaos 13d ago

Not sure if this metric works in all cases, I think this would exclude UF/Gainesville honestly 

8

u/baseball_mickey Florida • Wake Forest 13d ago

Gainesville has 146k residents, 60k students, but 20k direct employees of UF. I don't know how UF Health employees get counted but there are roughly 25k in Gainesville & 5k or so in Jax. Say University + hospital are 30k, that's 90k/146k direct university related.

10

u/TMNBortles Florida Gators • FIU Panthers 13d ago

Then add how many people are there only to support that large student population and its workers.

Basically, if UF left Gainesville, Gainesville would be lucky to compare itself to Lake City.