I was just in Flagstaff, Arizona this weekend and loved it. I often wonder about adults who live in college towns and don’t work for the university itself. It seems like it would be a very interesting to do so, but what exactly do they do for work that can pay the bills?
I’d guess most work in jobs that could be done anywhere. Auto mechanics, nurses, police officers and other such jobs can be done in any populated area. In a college town, you’re also going to need service workers for bars and restaurants.
There are some college towns which are also state capitals, so they are unique. I went to college at Florida State University which is located in Florida’s capital city of Tallahassee.
Tell me your story of living in a college town and not working for the school.
I’ve worked in a couple <Bloomington, Eugene> and not worked for the colleges, but it was often work that was as described, for restaurants that might not have existed if the college wasn’t there.
Well, I lived in Ames, IA for many years. While an awful lot of people work at the university, there are lots of unrelated businesses that could exist everywhere and that don’t serve the university’s needs. The cool thing is that you get a lot more interesting restaurants and grocery stores than the town would get otherwise, and summers were blissfully quiet.
As we were close enough to Des Moines to share a job market, I ended up moving after doing the commute thing for awhile. As you can imagine, having an unmarketable bachelor’s degree did not count for a lot in getting a job in a college town, where I was competing with tons of graduate students and recent college grads. I did have a government job in town for awhile, but it was tangentially related to the school.
I live in a college town. I’m retired now but when I was working I didn’t work in the town itself. My job was in another town about fifteen miles away.
I live in a college town, and I don’t work for the college.
I’m a little confused at the OP - though the college is one of the largest employers around, they’re hardly the only employer. We have a hospital that’s about the same size, and countless other places to work, including anything from manufacturing to mines to the service industry (restaurants/hotels/etc) to construction and other trades. Percentage-wise, WAY more people work in those areas than at the university. In other words, it’s like every other non-university town.
I live in a college town. There are a lot of businesses that don’t cater to the college or its students, like Lowe’s/Home Depot (we have both) and other home-improvement stores; insurance agencies; a largish hospital supported by a lot of health care providers; public-safety workers; teachers; and so forth. The college staff and students contribute a lot to the local economy, and the benefits the college offers make the town a little more livable, but there are townies who need to eat and fix their houses and see a doctor whether there was a college or not.
I’d think the relationship of the town to its college is a factor. If Shippensburg University closed, Shippensburg would probably cease to exist, because the town exists to support the university. (IIRC, the population doubles when school is in session, and the town is empty when it’s not.) However, if Dickinson College closed, Carlisle would be hurt, but Carlisle isn’t just Dickinson in the way that Shippensburg is just Shippensburg University. Does that makes sense?
Those were my thoughts, too. I guess there are college towns where the college is the only big thing, but my hometown is not like that. My ex-husband has lived there for 52 years and never worked for the college. He’s a carpenter.
I live in a college town, but I teach in the public schools. Without the college, though, and the people who work for it, there wouldn’t be enough students to keep the schools open! We’d have to consolidate with one of the other little towns around.
Yeah, this. I like having the college around–without it we’d be another podunk hot farming town–but it’s hardly the only thing here. The hospital is the other large employer in town, but there’s also plenty of agriculture, some industry, some software, and so on. And of course a school district, my dad works there. My husband is a software guy, and I was working for the public library until last year. (I’m about to start work at the county CC library.)
We actually don’t see much of the college students unless we go downtown or into the areas of town that students mostly live in. But they sure keep our town more interesting (as well as more drunken)–the downtown area would certainly not survive without them, but with students supporting it, it’s a great place to hang out. My SIL helps to run a small business downtown that caters mostly to college women.
So…pretty much like anywhere else, only with better shopping.
I lived in a college town in which the metropolitan area was a college town, state capital, and huge automotive manufacturing sector. I spent a year there, working for the latter of three items I mentioned. It seemed just like any other town.
My Uncle managed the Sears store in Ames through the 1970s and most of the 1980s.
My sister and her husband live in a college town. They both work for the hospital. My other sister lives there as well. She works for the radio station.
It depends on how you define a college town. I think of it as being a town where the college provides almost all the economic activity, either directly by the school or by serving those who work in the school.
Like Tallahassee, I never considered a college town. Too much of the city is state government. This isn’t to say the college isn’t important, but Tallahassee would do fine without it, because of the government.
Other towns like Bloomington, IL and Champaign-Urbana in Illinois started out that way but now both areas are regional urban areas. Or Ames, I think those cites are more known for the colleges that being actual college towns
While smaller towns like Carbondale, IL and Macomb, IL are more what I’d consider college towns. Of course I know that’s subjective.
Population-wise, the town I live in is about 20K people. This year, enrollment at the university is 9400, so that’s nearly a third of the town. You can definitely tell when the college is in session versus the summer.
Still, there’s plenty of businesses around town that don’t cater to the university. It’s not like we’d disappear if it closed.
Well, if you live in a college town that’s also the state capital it’s not really a college town, in the way that, say, Athens or Clemson is. I live in Columbia, SC, which has the largest university in the state downtown, but we also have the state government and the biggest basic training base in the world.
On the other hand, the college does have a huge effect on the town. I’m dreading this month because They’ll Be Back - we won’t be going to all the same restaurants and places we do in the summer. I always forget and try to go to Target on move-in weekend. You can’t even get down a lot of streets when they’re in. It’s a big hassle. And don’t even GET ME STARTED about football season. Seriously, just thinking about it just raised my blood pressure.
I’m a public librarian. Our selection policies and such do take the university library into account - we probably get fewer academic journals in print than similarly sized public libraries do elsewhere, because we have that resource to direct people to. We do see a lot of college kids who are scared of the academic library. We also have several smaller schools in the area with inadequate libraries (who are also scared of the USC library.) So it affects my work, yeah. It also made my job harder to get, since there’s a library school at USC.