A college town or university town is a community (often a separate town or city, but in some cases a town/city neighborhood or a district) which is dominated by its university population. The university may be large, or there may be several smaller institutions such as liberal arts colleges clustered, or the residential population may be small, but college towns in all cases are so dubbed because the presence of the educational institution(s) pervades economic and social life. Many local residents may be employed by the university — which may be the largest employer in the community — many businesses cater primarily to the university, and the students' population may outnumber the local population.
In Europe, a university town is generally characterized by having an old university, often founded before, or in some cases shortly after, the industrial revolution. The economy of the city is closely related with the university activity and highly supported by the entire university structure, which may include university hospitals and clinics, university printing houses, libraries, laboratories, business incubators, student rooms, dining halls, students' unions, student societies, and academic festivities. Moreover, the history of the city is often intertwined with the history of the university itself. Many European university towns have not been merely important places of scientific and educational endeavor, but also centers of political, cultural and social influence to their respective societies throughout the centuries. Examples of these cities include Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, Szeged, Kraków, Leiden, Groningen, Grenoble, Montpellier, Bologna, Coimbra, Salamanca, Leuven, Ghent, Heidelberg, Freiburg, Fribourg, Göttingen, Trondheim, Pisa, L'Aquila, Marburg, Jena, Ferrara, Uppsala, Siena, Pavia, Eskişehir, Delft, Tartu, Tübingen, or Poitiers. Potchefstroom, Grahamstown and Stellenbosch are South African examples of university towns in the European tradition.
Besides a highly educated and largely transient population, a stereotypical college town often features a high number of people living non-traditional lifestyles and subcultures and high tolerance for unconventionality in general, an unusually active musical or cultural scene, and unusually left-wing politics, although there are exceptions; many college towns in the Southern United States are right-wing. Many have become centers of technological research and innovative startups.
Read more about College Town: Town-Gown Relations, Settlement in College Towns, College Towns Worldwide
Famous quotes containing the words college and/or town:
“Jerry: She’s one of those third-year girls that gripe my liver.
Milo: Third-year girls?
Jerry: Yeah, you know, American college kids. They come over here to take their third year and lap up a little culture. They give me a swift pain.
Milo: Why?
Jerry: They’re officious and dull. They’re always making profound observations they’ve overheard.”
—Alan Jay Lerner (1918–1986)
“Americans living in Latin American countries are often more snobbish than the Latins themselves. The typical American has quite a bit of money by Latin American standards, and he rarely sees a countryman who doesn’t. An American businessman who would think nothing of being seen in a sport shirt on the streets of his home town will be shocked and offended at a suggestion that he appear in Rio de Janeiro, for instance, in anything but a coat and tie.”
—Hunter S. Thompson (b. 1939)