Note: Around the College Towns is my weekly links roundup article on urbanism and education. These posts mostly cover news that may have fallen through the cracks rather than the big events.

I’m still in the Halloween mood with this one. Make sure to read last week’s full article on the holiday:

Haunted House Adaptive Reuse Corner

This week on Adaptive Reuse Corner, I am leaning into the Halloween holiday. Rather than asking you your favorite adaptive reuse, I am polling for the spookiest adaptive reuse. Think about it as the place that would kind of freak you out to sleep over. I’m calling this week’s edition the Haunted House Tour.

Just to recap the previous edition of Adaptive Reuse Corner, we have our first tie. As the host of this show, I am going to be the judge in the tie-breaker. To continue our Halloween theme this week, I’m going with the old Masonic Temple. That place would be one to see a possible ghost.

This Haunted House Tour of Adaptive Reuse Corner is ordered from most expensive to cheapest. Unlike in previous editions, I am going to limit myself to just five for this spooky competition. That is the max number of choices on Substack polling, too. On to the nominations this week…

First up is a former opium den in San Francisco, CA. This place might look fancy, but it has a pretty haunted history. Along with the drug use, it also acted as a brothel at one point. Obviously, the place has been refurbished since those days. According to SF Gate, the mansion has been featured in the Netflix mystery drama The OA. You can live your own murder mystery for just $25 million

Next up, we have a bed-and-breakfast in Denver, CO. This Victorian mansion built in the 1890s is home to the iconic Lumber Baron Inn. The site of a double homicide, locals think the place is haunted. It was also featured in the Netflix paranormal reality show 28 Days Haunted. If you have always dreamed of being a proprietor of a creepy inn, à la Psycho (1960), then this one can be yours for just under $3 million.

Continuing onward on this haunted house tour, I now bring you to a church in Cincinnati, OH. Built in 1866, the Gothic Revival architecture features cathedral ceilings and stained glass windows. The old church organ also remains. It is certainly a wonderful remodel, but some of the features make me think the owners may have been a secret vampire coven. Why would you paint the entire thing black, and what is up with the arrangement of the chairs?! This is the perfect kind of macabre for What We Do in the Shadows, a steal in that neighborhood for just $1.2 million.

We now come to the lower tier with a convent in Butte, MT, at around $750K. A brick structure built in 1917, the space has been a convent, school, and domestic violence center. Funny enough, the property is being sold as a single-family residence because the city denied an application for it to become a coding academy. ‘The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street’ in the form of your NIMBY neighbors. One is quoted: “Parking to this day… it’s a nightmare in the area.” The NIMBY Halloween parodies write themselves.

Finally, we have the most affordable housing option on the Haunted House tour: a former church in small-town Arkansas, priced at under $40K. I cannot find much information on the church itself. The conversion is a little rough, but it has apparently been converted into a five-unit apartment complex at some point. It looks to be in the middle of nowhere, down a long, narrow, creaky road. It gives off some real Texas Arkansas Chainsaw Massacre vibes. Be warned.

Which one of these is the spookiest adaptive reuse? Comment below or vote in the official poll on my Notes feed. Happy Halloween!

Links I’m Reading This Week

Education

• Gambling Prediction platforms are opening up bets for admission rates to top colleges. Cue up a future higher education scandal in 3…2…1…

• has recently joined Substack. He’s posting about the future of higher ed.

• I often pass along jobs to my students that I see posted on social media. Interestingly, this week I spotted one from Johns Hopkins that disclosed that AI would be used in screening. I’m glad they are admitting this, but I do not like the trend.

  

• In student housing news, some students at UC Santa Cruz are reportedly living in garages. I guess that’s better than in your car, but not by much.

• More from California: new laws in California mean more student housing around colleges and universities in the state. NIMBYs are probably losing their minds.

• UCLA student newspaper rightly blames city government/ Karen Bass for the housing crisis. Love this message from the author:

  UCLA might be an easy target for student grievances, but that doesn’t mean it’s the correct one. Students must shift their complaints to our elected officials and the broken system they maintain.

• There are similar stories across the country: a dumpy, run-down building near new BYU could become housing. But the local community is concerned with… surprise, surprise… parking.

• Residents of a Philadelphia suburb who live next to a college are frustrated by student activity, so they passed a local ordinance targeting student housing. This is Villanova’s new campus, but the space has long been a university, as the university just replaced Cabrini University, which closed recently. Not very neighborly of the neighbors.

• In another campus newspaper article, a student at the University of Houston complains that their dorms are way overpriced for what they get. This is an issue with modern higher ed. Dorms are considered a prime revenue source. So sometimes students get squeezed.

• Colorado Mesa University received a massive $10 million donation specifically focused on expanding on-campus housing. Cool to see a big donation that isn’t to the latest trend (looking at AI initiatives) and instead to the meat and potato operations of a university.

• Mass timber construction seems to be becoming a trend in the student housing space. They seem to look nicer than what is typically built, so that is welcome

• A dead college campus in Wisconsin may be getting affordable housing. This is a growing and welcomed trend. Just got to get past the regulations.

• In more closed college news, people are salivating at the entire campus in Michigan is up for sale. It looks nice, but be careful out there, guys!

• Three administrators connected with a now-defunct college are indicted for allegedly stealing $20 million. I always hear about possible corruption regarding college closures, but this is the first criminal case directly tied to a college closure I’ve seen.

• Looking abroad, a luxury hotel in Hong Kong becomes student housing. Wow, it would be pretty cool to live there.

  

• Japan’s women-only universities are switching to co-ed due to population struggles. We have already lost most single-sex institutions here in the US. Few, if any, will be around in 40 years.

• Dorms in Senegal use local vernacular design to be flexible to student needs. Simple yet look pretty nice for students.

  Urbanism-ish

• showcased the 2nd Annual Spooky Ride. I love it. We have to make sure Halloween doesn’t become a driving holiday.

• at offers a way to make suburban neighborhoods better for kids and families: just put the cars in the back. Agreed, I’ve long thought we should bring back alley parking. Driveways and garages kill neighborhood connection.

• Millennials vs. Boomers is like some eternal Batman vs. Joker war. Fortune outlines the latest battle in the war, with housing taking center stage in this recent battle:

Baby boomers are setting up a showdown with millennials, aging in place and plunking down hundreds of thousands on renovating their homes

• on the discusses how California cities try to get around new laws that are targeted at building more housing. Basically, localities are attempting to break state law with obstruction.

• Some are fighting the good fight. of released a new platform for connecting builders across the country who are contributing to better urbanism. I see some familiar faces that I know here from Substack. Cool project.

• I am also flagging a new book from the Rural Indexing Project. Just some good old-fashioned Americana with this one.

• In some more rural development news, Japan’s Fujitsu is building a quantum computing research facility in New Mexico. Good high-paying jobs in research and operations will follow along.

• In transportation news, why are women so against self-driving cars? as reported by in . I don’t really understand why this is a gendered issue. I guess I need to investigate more on the topic, given my own affinity for the tech.

• Relatedly, Chicago is expanding a program that auto-tickets drivers blocking bus and bike lanes. Good, get these bums out of the way.

• Back in California, the LAX People Mover is getting delayed again due to “technical challenges.” Can we just fire this company and bring in the Chinese?

• Speaking of places with good urbanism abroad, Seoul is getting self-driving buses. This is another reason why urbanists shouldn’t be afraid of AV tech. It should make public transit easier and better.

• Northwest China received so many tourists during a recent holiday that local tourism authorities opened school dorms to travelers.

• But some young Chinese tourists have become jaded by the low-quality tourist-trap souvenirs, according to on .

• of chronicles his trip on Uzbekistan’s new high-speed rail. The richest country in the world is getting out-built by Uzbekistan!

• In some random news, the writer and illustrator of Dinotopia, , gives a behind-the-scenes look at his creation on his Substack. I always loved this series as a kid; the world-building and design are just incredible work. It’s cool to be able to connect with the creator here.

Closing Time… Digital Archive of Book Photos

I am always looking for interesting and fun photos that I can pair with my Substack articles. I usually like to use my own photos or graphics. Sometimes I search through old books and magazines to find them. This new tool lets me do both at the same time.

The tool is called the Inside Out Library, a free online archive of historical illustrations, diagrams, or other imagery. All of the included images are in the public domain, at least according to intellectual property laws in the US. I spend a lot of time just searching and scrolling with various terms of interest.

The author posted it on the r/publicdomain subreddit, which I connected with when I wrote about Tintin entering the public domain a few years ago (along with the legal dust-up to my article). The poster mentioned that they used to work for the Internet Archive, though this is not officially connected with the group.

The creator describes how the Inside Out Library works as follows:

• I only include books the holding library marks as public domain or “no known copyright restrictions”, or that were published before 1931.

• Every image page shows the source’s rights statement and links to the library’s record, so you can check it yourself.

• Over 99% of the images come from books published before 1931. Most of the rest are US government reports.

The site pulls from images inside scanned books via the Internet Archive, the Library of Congress, the British Library, the New York Public Library, museums, and more. It hosts around 1.7 million images so far. This is a lot of fun. I found some cool Halloween-themed images, which made the cover of this post. I will likely continue using it for future articles, too. Try it out. What did you find?

This is my fourth annual Halloween article discussing the trick-or-treat tradition. In the first article that predates College Towns, I argued in Strong Towns that we should protect the tradition, suggesting local communities coming together to block car traffic on Halloween night. The next year, I defended my derision of the lamer alternative trunk-or-treat that has become popular in recent years (see below). Last year, I discussed how destination neighborhoods, fueled by social media, pull trick-or-treaters away from their traditional territory.

I’ve pinned the demise of our Halloween traditions on bad urbanism, car-centric culture, destination neighborhoods, and social media. But the sociology behind the tradition is even more complicated than that. This year, I am covering another factor behind fewer trick-or-treaters: fewer kids. The erosion of the trick-or-treating tradition in the US is just part of our rapidly aging society.

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Peak Population, Peak Halloween

Baby Boomers, born between 1946-1964, had a kind of golden age of Halloween. This cohort was a massive generation, the biggest by far in American history at that point. By the end of the 1960s, there were almost 70 million Boomer kids, accounting for over 36% of the entire US population at the peak (see chart below). The lifecycle of the Boomer became central to how we conceptualize American society.

While trick-or-treating has much older roots, the modern American tradition was forged during the childhood of the Boomers. The country was coming out of sugar rationing during the World War II and Great Depression eras, with a booming economy, a boom in babies being born (hence the generational name), and the rise of the suburbs. Halloween is the ur-suburban holiday, which is no coincidence since it arose with the Boomers who were the first generation raised in the newly built single-family home neighborhoods. Their trick-or-treat was wholesome, like a Peanuts comic strip.

Of course, the Boomers could not stay young forever—despite what they might believe. Their successors, Gen X, were a much smaller cohort (born between 1965-1980). By the late 1970s, the total number of American kids actually began to decline, dipping to 62 million in the mid-1980s at roughly 26% of the American population. During this generation’s childhood, Halloween took on more horror themes through the rise of slasher films like Friday the 13th (1980) and Halloween (1978).

The shrinking population of American kids would not last. The Millennials (born 1981-1996) mark the largest generation of young people in American history, being the children of the Boomers, hitting 74 million by the end of the 2000s. During Millennial childhood, Halloween reverted to a classic, sillier feel, harking back to their parents’ childhood through films like Hocus Pocus (1993) and The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993). In general, the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s saw the maturation of Halloween into a more commercialized holiday, from candy to costumes to decorations.

Despite the large raw number, the percentage of the underage population remained much smaller at around just 24% for Millennials. Both the total number of American kids and their share of the total population began to decline after the Millennials. The Zoomers (born between 1997-2012) shrank further to 73 million and around 22% of the American population by 2020.

The current youngest generation, Alphas (born 2013 onward), is only getting smaller, as Millennials didn’t have that many kids (sorry, mom). Whatever comes after will be even smaller. Perhaps these numbers do not seem all too dissimilar, and there are still millions of kids out there. Yet it's the dilution that lowers the cultural impact.

Looking at the ratio of young Americans under 18 to those above 65 in the chart above, the country has been on a long descent. For Boomers, there were roughly 4 young people to 1 old person when they were kids. That was halved to 2 to 1 for both Gen X and Millennials. Today, that ratio is closer to 1 to 1. Childhood experiences are just less important culturally in a much older society.

The reality is that we have already reached peak childhood in the country. Our past was much younger and livelier; the future will only get more stale and quiet. This means we've already reached peak Halloween because the density of kids is dissipating. It is unlikely to bounce back.

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Disney Adults, Halloween Adults

Given the population is so much older than it was compared to previous cohorts, society is getting different cultural focuses and emphases. Kids, in this environment, are losing their centrality. They are taking a back seat to larger, older cohorts, including in domains that were formerly for children.

In the past few years, we have seen the phenomenon of the Disney Adults. These Disney uber fans are usually middle-aged people with a lot of disposable income, no kids, and a massive affinity for the Mouse. There are TikTok videos and social media posts chronicling their epicureanism, sometimes to the dismay of parents who feel they are taking spots from kids. Disneyland, opened in 1955, was really designed with the Boomer child in mind, and the theme parks just grew with Gen X and Millennials. Today, kids and families are only part of the larger pie of Disney’s target audience, rather than the entire pie like with previous generations.

A related trend in aging American society is the rise of cards and toys as highly sought-after collectibles. Certainly, baseball cards have long had their collectors going back decades. Even Toy Story 2 (1999) was about Woody being kidnapped by a toy collector. The intensity has only risen as a money-making venture of resellers, clouding out cards and toys as child playthings. Toys and cards bring in serious cash. We see stories of Costco having to limit the number of Pokémon cards to stop resellers from buying them out. These were previously the exclusive domain of kids.

This same phenomenon can be seen in the way we celebrate Halloween. Yes, there is still some fun trick-or-treating, especially in destination neighborhoods. And I will begrudgingly accept trunk-or-treat as an alternative better than nothing. But the holiday has really become a party for adults. Workplaces hold costume contests, bars have costumed dance parties, people organize pub crawls in their costumes, and all types of other (adult) debauchery. In this older society, Halloween has become more about adults than kids.

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Bad Urbanism is Still Part of the Problem

In a previous edition of my annual Halloween article, I made the case that parents were rationally responding to our dangerous streets. They were eschewing trick-or-treat in favor of trunk-or-treat as a safer alternative. Sprawl and street design are certainly urbanism issues impacting the holiday. The aging population only adds to it.

In an ideal world, families would move into a house to give the kids a good childhood, including yearly trick-or-treats on Halloween. As the kids age out, the parents should give up their house to their kids, moving into a smaller granny flat out back, or selling to another young family looking for a home. But because much of the country has blocked so many homes, there are not a lot of smaller houses for seniors to move into these days.

In the current climate, Boomers are not downsizing at expected rates. They are staying in place or, in some cases, even buying bigger homes. There is a big push to end property taxes on seniors. This means that not only are housing prices higher, but young families are also burdened with more taxes due to seniors opting out. We have seen this in both liberal and conservative states, with Proposition 13 in California and Florida lawmakers proposing senior property tax exemptions.

These housing issues have also factored into the lower birthrate for recent generations. As housing prices rise and rise, along with other debt, Millennials and Gen Z have put off having kids. The cohort who was supposed to be born back in 2010 simply were never born. Given these trends, it will only get worse.

Schools are the canary in the coal mine. Districts across the country have been bleeding students. The country is now seeing a trend of school closures not just in big cities but also in suburban and rural areas. Reflecting the adultification of society, some shuttered schools are being turned into breweries. There just aren’t enough students to go around. If an area does not even have enough students to fill a classroom, it is also going to struggle with trick-or-treaters.

Elementary and middle schools have often been the lynchpin to Halloween, hosting scary parties and allowing kids to dress up. Sometimes, teachers may even pitch in to give less affluent students costumes. In turn, the kids then return home and continue celebrating in their local neighborhoods. Not to mention, on the school day after Halloween, classmates all brag to each other about their candy haul.

In previous generations, a neighborhood may have been lively and festive, flushed with kids returning from school and traipsing around in the evening. Eventually, the kids grow up, and their parents don’t move. With fewer homes, they move to sprawling Arizona or Texas. All that remain in the original neighborhood are old people. Schools close and potential trick-or-treaters thin out. With fewer and fewer each year, households stop participating. The ones who remain go off to a destination neighborhood instead. This is the cycle of erosion for the American tradition.

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What Comes Next? Día de los Muertos

Traditions come and go in various cultures. And one that is coming that feels like it might end up becoming a new Halloween tradition is Día de los Muertos, AKA Day of the Dead. The holiday originated in Mexico and has proliferated to parts of the US with large Hispanic populations like California and Texas.

The 2020 US Census recorded about 62.1 million Hispanic Americans, with 18.8 million under the age of 18. These youth account for 30% of the entire Hispanic population, closer to the numbers the country saw when the Boomers were kids. This population is just more youthful compared to the American average. While they don’t all celebrate Day of the Dead, the holiday is proliferating.

In some ways, Day of the Dead reminds me more of older Halloween traditions before it became more secularized. Halloween used to be known as All Hallows’ Eve or All Saints’ Eve, connected with Christianity, and brought over by the Irish and Scots in the 19th century. There are clear religious and spiritual elements to the Day of the Dead, such as the aspects honoring fallen family members. Likewise, the costumes are strictly about skulls or specific spiritual depictions.

Halloween used to be more spiritual, too. Early Halloweens in the US were more about ghosts and stories to scare children into behaving rather than pop culture. The secular costumes came with the post-War Baby Boom and the childhood of the Boomers, followed by Gen X in Star Wars costumes, and later Millennials as Ninja Turtles. The Day of the Dead has already been captured in our popular culture through the Pixar film Coco (2017), which is getting a sequel in 2029.

My guess is that Day of the Dead and Halloween will eventually merge into one holiday, one that is a very American holiday. Just like the mixtures of cultures that gave us what we call Halloween, various European traditions melted together to become our traditional ghost stories, jack-o’-lanterns, and trick-or-treating.

Some might be angry that this is the so-called “replacement theory.” But that is not what’s going on here. Instead, there is just a clear difference in birthrates for long-time Americans and more recent Hispanic immigrants (Asian immigration has not actually seen this). These differences are mostly due to affluence. Once a society becomes more wealthy, its people stop having as many kids, an almost universal phenomenon.

In the end, Halloween will survive; trick-or-treat will, too, in some form. The American tradition will again gobble up customs brought from abroad, along with its new costumes. The tradition will just be different due to our aging population in the country. What is clear is that the US has already hit peak kid, and along with it, peak Halloween.

So that being said, this one is for me. I almost just included it in an ‘Around the College Towns’ links round-up post. But it started to get a bit unwieldy. We will return to our regularly scheduled programming next week. In this article, I discuss some milestones for the site, fun added segments from this year, and even a note about our newly created rival.

College Towns Year 2: The Good, the Bad, the Ugly

In year two of College Towns, I have maintained the momentum from the first year. The site has continued to grow in readership, now with over 1,300 subscribers. I hope to hit 2,000 when I am writing the year three reflection.

I have seven paid subscribers. This might not seem like a lot, but I honestly never imagined people would pay for a subscription when I first opened the paid option one year ago. I promised myself that I would get a year under my belt before I tried to add payment. That was probably a mistake, as the Substack algorithm favors accounts with more paid subscribers.

So I must say “thank you” to all of the subscribers, especially the paid subscribers. I believe College Towns should always be freely available. Yet the funders are helping to fuel the research that goes into the analysis here and beyond. I promise that once my book on shuttered colleges is published, I will send a copy to each paid subscriber who supported the College Towns Research Grant (CTRG).

More subscribers mean there are more people to get angry at your work. In year two, I have had a quick trigger finger on blocking accounts that are rude or even just annoying. The internet can be a nasty place; I don’t want negativity to impact the quality of College Towns.

This works both ways. If someone doesn’t like what I write, then they can simply walk away. And they have! That’s fine; it's their prerogative. I usually hardly notice, as new subscribers balance out the losses. But my article on study abroad disparities for men (see above) seemed to hit some kind of nerve, with 15 readers hitting the unsubscribe button. I will not, though, get wrapped up in audience capture.

The Good

New milestones and accolades for the site.

Success for this site is not just about subscriber numbers; I have also seen accolades from my field and popular media. The Chronicle of Higher Ed reached out to repost a version of my Age of Conquest article, which was well received by their readers. Likewise, College Towns has been cited in many of the leading education outlets, such as the aforementioned Chronicle, Inside Higher Ed, and University World News. Even mainstream outlets like The Atlantic and Spectrum News have cited College Towns (see my interview below). The site even ended up getting cited in a congressional report.

The success of College Towns is not just about my writing; I have had some amazing guest posters this year. This year they were all part of the“Summer School at College Towns” series that ran over the summer. They are all doing fantastic work on their own sites:

• at on higher ed advocacy.

• at on a new way to teach and learn urbanism.

• at on housing restrictions in UC Santa Barbara’s college town.

• at on graduate students getting younger.

If you have an idea for a piece, reach out. I’d love to open up guest posts on College Towns year-round. I will also make a bigger Call for Contributors this summer again, too.

Substack Notes is the New Twitter

My quest to find the new Twitter has been a topic of discussion throughout my couple of years on Substack. I think I have finally found my Twitter replacement: Substack. Or should I say through Notes.

I have had a few viral posts (see example below). And many of my notes get way more engagement than my actual articles. Although sometimes those two things are tied together. I appreciate that Notes can give a greater audience, but it is also sometimes frustrating that a throwaway comment can garner magnitudes more attention than a well-crafted post.

One thing I miss about the Old Twitter is the community we had there. Since Musk took over, you rarely see content from people you follow. Substack has recreated that here. And it has been a joy to connect with other Substackers doing interesting work. Shout out to , , , and , all of whom I have connected with on Substack this year.

Because Notes gets a lot more interactions these days, I have been able to add a new fun segment: Adaptive Ruse Corner. This is where I highlight a few houses that were once another use (like a church that became a condo). Readers can vote for the best one via Notes each week. I appreciate the cheering on for this segment by . Make sure to check out my interview on his podcast, Test and the Rest: College Admission Podcast.

With the growth of Notes, it has become an important part of the arsenal for Substackers. Other social media are hit and miss, and many sites want to keep you in their little walled garden now. I will continue my weekly articles in year three of College Towns, while also posting daily on Notes. It is a nice symbiosis.

The Bad

Substack Exposes Annoyances in Academic Publishing

I was already annoyed with academic publishing when I first started College Towns, which I talked about in my first year reflection. After two years of writing here, I am now even more annoyed. Writing on Substack is so much freer, quicker, and more efficient. I can get my ideas out no matter the gatekeepers. Maybe they’re bad—so be it. The readers can decide.

In the academic publishing world, our writing is at the beck and call of reviewers. Certainly, peer review can be helpful sometimes, but other times the feedback can mostly be pedantic. Jargon is the preferred language. Trying to write a sentence that a regular person might be able to comprehend or maybe (*gasp*) enjoy is anathema to academic writing. As I switch back and forth now, my brain is more stuck in Substack mode.

An example comes from two recent works. One started over four years ago. My co-author and I initially presented some of the early work at a conference, but then the project got lost in the shuffle. I have been trying to revive it through a call for book chapters. It is a good fit, so I hope it works. But I noticed that the anticipated publishing date is not until 2028! So basically, almost a decade from the ideation of the project to publication.

Another one comes from a different journal article that is stuck in development muck. Admittedly, it is interdisciplinary and trying to do something a little different. This cuts out the more traditional journals in my field—fine enough. But as I’ve been trying to place it with other journals, the process is beset by delays.

It initially took six months for the journal to find reviewers, then another few months for them to get back with the reviews. The review comments and requested edits were extensive, but I remained confident, brought on a second author to grapple with the task, and sent it back. A few months later, I received more negative reviews, even worse than the first time.

Peer review is supposed to be about science, but many of the quibbles I have gotten about this specific paper were about framing the topic and citations. The process is less science and more philosophy. Not to mention the academic journal space exploits academics and makes the publishers rich.

I have half a mind to just trim all the fat and publish the meat here on College Towns. Yet, given my job is in academia, I still have to keep one foot in the journal world, no matter how frustrating.

The Ugly

College Towns has a New (Friendly) Rival.

I have long believed that this site works in symbiosis with traditional media. They have a beat that they cover, and I have mine. For instance, I thought the ‘Cornell 7’ case was too dark for the theme of the page. Conversely, none of the major higher ed outlets covered last year’s miraculous turnaround by Indiana University to win the college football championship. There is certainly overlap in our coverage, but I think the place of Substack is to be a little weird.

Recently, I’ve had a bit of friction with one traditional media outlet. Two months ago, The Boston Globe launched a higher education-focused newsletter, which would be fine and even welcomed on its own. However, the newspaper also decided to borrow the name of my Substack, calling it College Town. When I first saw this over on LinkedIn, I was obviously irked.

I commented on the announcement with a snarky comment like “sounds familiar” with a link to my site (yes, a little childish. I know). To the journalist’s credit, who is running the newsletter, they reached out afterward to give a kind of half-hearted mea culpa. They said that the team had looked for names and did not see that College Towns had already existed.

After they reached out, I actually figured that I would just leave it alone. “It’s just a Boston Globe vertical that will appear on their own site,” is what I (wrongly) thought. A few weeks after the announcement, I saw their site on Substack. Joining Substack annoyed me even more.

They told me they searched for the name and didn’t see anything. But on Substack, they could not even get the handle for their desired name. Not only was “College Towns” taken by me, but “College Town” was taken by someone else! The Boston Globe had to add “global” to the name for their handle here on Substack.

I must question if they even did a search for names. Of course, when starting this Substack, I did a lot of searches. Before ultimately deciding on “College Towns,” I did consider “College Town,” “Town & Gown,” and “Town vs. Gown,” among others. You know, due diligence, and I’m just one guy with another full-time job. I just don’t think the Boston Globe really made the effort.

A few colleagues told me that I should sue. After poking around with AI, I decided against it. But it did get me thinking that I should start a new newsletter called “The Boston Globes.” I wonder if I would get any letters from Legal for that one?

In the end, I’m just going to look at the other College Town as a rival, a friendly rival, but still a rival. They have the full weight of one of the country’s biggest newspapers behind them, so I think they will be successful. I have actually even liked some of the stuff they published!

My main worry is that readers from the sector will think that I am an imitator. It would actually be kind of funny if they tried to sue me for impersonation in like five years. Likewise, I do not want their existence to impact the flexibility of the site, such as scaring off potential partners. In the end, it will probably just be fine. I just want to be clear on record: I was here first, the original, the only College Towns.

My Favorite Articles in Year Two of College Towns

Like I did in the first-year retrospective, I have ranked my top-10 favorite articles from the year. Most of these are original analysis articles, but I did sneak in one ‘Around the College Towns’ links round-up. This second year coincided with the American Semiquincentennial. So I was excited to do a series that celebrated the country’s birthday, even as the rest of the country didn’t feel like it. This Semiquincentennial Series dominates the list this year.

Please take some time to read through any of these and more in the College Towns’ archive, now with hundreds of articles. Thank you for reading! Here’s to year three. Cheers.

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Note: Around the College Towns is my weekly links roundup article on urbanism and education. These posts mostly cover news that may have fallen through the cracks rather than the big events.

The Trend in Universities Cutting Child Care

In the last few weeks, three major universities have announced cuts to their on-campus childcare services. The University of Kansas announced the closure of Hilltop Child Development Center, while UCLA is ending the Early Care and Education program at the end of the academic year—both announcements have sent their community of parents scrambling to find replacements. Furthermore, Virginia Tech will no longer support childcare for its graduate students.

The 74 first brought up these trends in April of this year in an expose. Apparently, it is not just a trend in higher ed:

The child care closure at UNO is reflective of a concerning trend: Across the country, universities, school districts and hospitals are shutting down affiliated child care programs at an alarming rate as the cracks in America’s child care system begin to widen into fissures.

While the wider cuts are concerning, I think there are specific reasons within higher education that help to explain the trend in the sector. Just in the last couple of years, I counted 18 institutions that have shuttered their on-campus childcare facilities. The table below does not even include cutting childcare benefits like at Virginia Tech, and I’m sure there are others that I missed.

I see the shuttering of campus childcare as an erosion of the multiuniversity. Clark Kerr, the mastermind behind the tiered higher education system in California, coined the term in The Uses of the University (1963):

The multiversity is an inconsistent institution. It is not one community but several--the community of the undergraduate and the community of the graduate; the community of the humanist, the community of the social scientist, and the community of the scientist; the communities of the professional schools; the community of all the nonacademic personnel; the community of the administrators. Its edges are fuzzy it reaches out to alumni, legislators, farmers, businessmen, who are all related to one or more of these internal communities (pp. 18-19).

Universities and colleges operate as kinds of little cities. People live and work on campus, walking to class, for food, or other services. They have all kinds of services, from gyms, restaurants, barber shops, and child care. Many institutions even have their own police force. This bundle that looks more like a city came along as universities turned into multiuniversities.

The closures in childcare facilities signal an erosion of the do-everything university model. A lot of recent criticism of higher ed argues that universities have strayed from their core mission of educating students. One of the loudest complaints comes from the idea of over-administration. Just this week, The Chronicle of Higher Education ran an article titled, “Has Administrative Bloat Reached a Breaking Point?”

As a multiuniversity, the university is supposed to do everything, including child care. The expectation can help explain the rise of administrators or support staff over the last few decades. But with the hits to higher ed, it seems that institutions are retreating from some of these duties, hence the cuts to child care.

I have long believed that universities should do more to make life easier for parents. I appreciate places like the University of Virginia expanding family housing on campus. Given the concerns about birth rates, these issues should only be more salient, not less. Even if our universities are no longer multiversities, I think they should care about child care for their communities.

The low birth rate itself is likely playing a role in these cuts. There are just fewer (little) kids running around college campuses, as recent cohorts are having fewer children and also waiting until later. But the cuts to child care will only make parenting more difficult for both students and employees, adding fuel to the demographic cliff. It is a downward spiral. These are part of broader societal issues we are seeing due to fewer kids (I will have a piece on this soon).

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Links I’m Reading This Week

Education

• Some colleges are slashing prices, including the university where I work, Soka University of America, offering free tuition for families earning under $200K. I think these are overall good trends. Our sector has far too long saddled young people with too much debt.

• Columbia Journalism School is pausing admissions into its MA. My guess is the student loan caps were a strong reason, since this degree can cost students $120K.

• More Age of Conquest moves: Carnegie Mellon University to build a new campus in Miami. This one is funded by another billionaire, a trend I have written about in the past.

• In more billionaire higher-ed news, an oil heir was given a professorship at a British university (Newcastle University). There is predictably a backlash!

• Harvard removes homeless camps from property. There was a debate on the college subreddit, with one side arguing it's callous and the other that it’s necessary.

• Here is data on where Senate staffers went to college via and at the . It is interesting to see so many state flagships from across the country rather than a handful of Ivies. But I guess this makes sense given the makeup of the Senate.

• Stanford (allegedly) uses AI to race-swap a student in promotional material. Almost funnier, they used it to make the other kids prettier. So weird.

• Declares: Liberal Arts Education is Not a Scam. Hear, hear! Agreed.

Headwaters

Liberal Arts Education is not a Scam

The liberal arts are under attack. The idea of a collegiate education that is wide-ranging, incorporating coursework in the humanities, sciences, arts, and communication no matter one’s primary course of study, is at the nadir of its popularity. Going beyond the obvious politically motivated attacks of recent years, a broader backlash against the libera…

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a month ago · 3 likes · Nolan Monaghan

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Urbanism-ish

• California high-speed rail delayed due to yet another lawsuit. What a disaster…

• LA may have to cut our connection to San Diego by rail. What a disaster... again…

• The Wall Street Journal did a video exposé on the terrible design of LAX. What an ongoing disaster!

• I have also complained about LA’s new transit center in my review of the billion-dollar project. Some thought I was being too harsh, but the delays are proving me correct:

  That’s the major problem with the LAX/Metro Transit Center: it’s surrounded by LA. The transit hub is not just going to fix a city, county, and region that has made 50 years’ worth of bad decisions around urbanism.

• I cannot help but compare our progress to that of China. The country recently opened four new high-speed rail lines. Very jealous.

• And if you want to go ride these trains for yourself, China is making it easier for foreigners to travel within the country with online registration.

• Staying in East Asia, The Financial Times asks, Is Seoul the New Paris? As someone who lived there almost 20 years ago, I am quite intrigued. It’s a great city.

• Now to head back home: OKC is getting the city’s first high school in its downtown. You can really feel the city revitalization in my hometown, where I’ll be next week for the Western Conference of the Association for Asian Studies.

• In other parts of the country, where are all the good-paying blue-collar jobs? In Alaska. Go north!

• And it is not all doom and gloom in the US transit world; Atlanta may get a light rail running next to its Beltline Loop. I reviewed a doc on these projects and came away quite impressed with Atlanta’s version.

Adaptive Reuse Corner

I’m back with another edition of Adaptive Reuse Corner. Last week’s winner came from the School/ Campus combo. While I voted for the Live-work unit, I would be partial to having a full basketball court in my house—just be wary of the upkeep!

The first two entries this week are both churches, one from Brookline, Massachusetts (A) and the other from Saginaw, Michigan (B). The one in Mass. is an absolute stunner of a conversion, but also a condo, meaning you only get part of the church for $1.2 million. The other in Michigan is cool for less than $249K, but basically has not been converted at all, meaning a lot more money.

The next comes in the form of two live-work units. The first is a bar-combo in Pittsburgh (C). If you have 2.3 million, live out your dreams of becoming Sam Malone from Cheers. Likewise, the other live-work unit from Colorado (D) sits in what was “once part of Deer Trail’s original downtown.” Nicely done for under $350K and only an hour from Denver, but the town itself looks to have seen better days. Do you have the courage to be part of its revival?

The next two are a bit cheating in Adaptive Reuse Corner, as they have houses within the wildcard properties. The first is a grain silo in southern Illinois (E), although it also includes a house on the lot. Only 40K! The realtor promises, “this recognizable Taylor Springs landmark offers a rare opportunity for a buyer with the vision to imagine what it could become next.” The other is a cave and wildlife park in central Pennsylvania (F). Penn’s Cave is a 1,400+ acre tourist attraction with farms, animals, picnic areas, a hotel, and a housing unit. Oh, and a massive cave. All this can be yours for only $34 million! Two extremes grouped together this week.

Finally, the last comes from a cool yet challenging conversion in the form of an old Masonic Temple in northern Indiana (G). Steep at just under $650K, there does not appear to be any conversion yet, as all the secret society’s interior remains, meeting room and all. The old downtown actually looks pretty cool, too. Hey, only 45 minutes to South Bend, so any Notre Dame professors out there have a look.

So which do you choose? Look for the Adaptive Reuse Corner poll next week.

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Closing Time… New Free Game for Urbanists

A new game might interest urbanists: Cityblock, a city builder game about one single street. The game seems to have some DNA with SimCity or Cities: Skylines, where players try to make improvements to the street with limited resources that grow with progression. Standard stuff for this genre of game.

The creator even came onto the r/Suburbanhell to discuss his game. It was not received well. It seems that a lot of the game was vibecoded. While the controls are a little janky, the game itself is free, so I don’t know what most people are complaining about (I actually think that subreddit is pretty toxic in general). Something like this is exactly the promise of AI.

It is not perfect, but I can always appreciate games that can double as learning tools. Classes that relate to urbanism can hop on this free game and put the students in the mind of city builders. It’s pretty simple to pick up. Give it a try and let me know what you think.

American male college students have lower study abroad rates than their female counterparts. It has long been a tough sell to get them to go. Even when I went back on my life-changing study abroad trip in college, I went alone because I could not convince any of my friends to join. That disinterest can be extrapolated across the entire country.

There has been some coverage of the disparities between men and women studying abroad. Major outlets like Inside Higher Ed (2008), The Washington Post (2015), and The Atlantic (2019) have covered the story through the years, but none provided any real solutions. The global travel and study abroad company Terra Dotta recently released a study entitled “Getting More Males to Study Abroad.” Most of the recommendations were focused on more students, male or female, to study abroad rather than just on the group with disparity.

While I agree that young Americans of all varieties should get a chance to study abroad, given how impactful my experience was, it saddens me that other young men do not take the same chance. In this article, I set out to understand the differences and consider reasons why American males are not studying abroad.

Study Abroad Numbers

The first thing to note is that there is indeed a disparity between American men and women when it comes to study abroad. I have heard some online commentary brushing aside these disparities as an artifact of overall higher education enrollment numbers. Indeed, women have long outnumbered men in American universities, but this does not actually explain the differences in study abroad.

According to the Women’s College Coalition, women began to outnumber men in higher education enrollment way back in the 1970s. The numbers have only increased since then, with women now accounting for roughly 58% of all students enrolled in American colleges and universities, according to National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) data on the graph below. These numbers have been fairly consistent over the last 25 years, yet have been slowly ticking up since 2018.

Using study abroad numbers from the Institute of International Education (IIE), the chief data-gathering organization for American international education, reports that 66.4% of American students who study abroad are women, with only 33.6% men. These numbers have remained stable over the last 25 years. This means that the disparity in study abroad is actually greater than the total higher education enrollment gender gap.

Interestingly enough, the gap between men vs. women in terms of study abroad is basically the same as the White vs. other racial groups. White students make up about 66% of all those who study abroad, compared to 34% of other racial groups. These numbers have drastically changed over the last few decades, moving from 84% White vs. 15% other groups back in 2000.

These racial group differences reflect the changing demographics of the country. Certainly, some barriers remain, but the overall changes can also reflect a focus by the higher education sector to diversify the study abroad participants. These efforts have worked!

Overall, more people of all kinds have studied abroad. Yet, the gender differences remain. I was even thinking that perhaps major plays a part. But IIE’s field breakdown shows male-dominated fields like STEM have the highest participation rates in study abroad (and still growing). So the disparity points to something else.

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Funding Study Abroad

In general, data suggests that most students choose not to study abroad because of finances. At the same time, American students are already drowning in debt to pay for college. Men also seem to be more concerned about student loan debt, borrowing less than women on average. Research has posited that men are more likely to favor “getting internships and making money” than studying abroad.

Given the importance of finances, there needs to be funding available to students if we want them to study abroad. There are certainly general scholarships and fellowships that target experiences abroad. Flagship government programs like the various Fulbrights, Boren Awards, or the Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) Program are available to all American youngsters. Likewise, individual schools may offer their students financial assistance, such as the University of Southern California’s (USC) Leonard Shoninger Endowed Scholarship.

At the same time, given the mentioned efforts to diversify study abroad, there are also scholarships geared directly at underrepresented groups, which do not include men as a ,group as far as I can tell. Another flagship program from the U.S. Department of State’s Gilman Program has the goal of providing opportunity to students who would not typically study abroad. According to the program in 2021 under Diversity of Background and Experience, the Selection Criteria prioritized the following student groups:

first-generation college students, students in STEM fields, racial and ethnic minority students, students with disabilities, students attending minority-serving institutions and community colleges, and students from U.S. states and institutions with lower study abroad participation, and more.

Of course, men may be included in these groups, though not explicitly. However, given the Trump administration’s fight against ethnic and gender prioritization, the Gilman website has scrubbed any mentions of student group diversity other than military.

Many of the other private study abroad funding sources also seem to have similar underrepresentation missions, without any explicit mention of men. Here are a few:

• The Fund for Education Abroad (FEA) targeted “students of color, community college, and first-generation college students.”

• The American Institute for Foreign Study Access (AIFS) reserved funding for “Inclusion, Diversity & Equity.”

• SIT Study Abroad had “Hispanic-serving Scholarships” and “HBCU Scholarships.”

• University Studies Abroad Consortium (USAC) has Access Scholarships that target: “Ethnically/Racially diverse, LGBTQIA+, Religiously diverse, Students with disabilities, Non-traditional age students (25+).”

• CET Academic Programs had a Diversity & Inclusion Scholarship for “students from racial/ethnic minority groups.”

• Semester at Sea has an Inclusive Engagement Scholarship that stipulates: “Preference will be given to students from underrepresented identities (Race/Ethnic Minorities, Students with Disabilities, First Generation, Low-Income, LGBTQIA+, Religions, Veterans).”

• The Institute for Study Abroad (IFSA) had “Diversity Scholarships.”

• Diversity Abroad’s Overseas Ambassador program stated: “Students from the following backgrounds are strongly encouraged to apply: economically disadvantaged, ethnic & racially diverse, first-generation, LGBTQ+, students with disabilities, students of faith.”

• The Diverse International Women of Color Study Abroad Scholarship is explicitly for “women of color.”

My point is not to say we should get rid of these programs. Although many (FEA, AIFS, CET, and SIT) have already appeared to remove DEI-like descriptions recently. Diversity Abroad has even completely rebranded as BeGlobali, but it has kept some of its previous priorities.

Instead, I am highlighting that there seems to be little direct effort to recruit men through funding, despite their clear underrepresentation. In my search, I could not find any funding programs that made explicit efforts to target men as a group. The closest thing I could find was those scholarships at all-male colleges like Wabash. I was even able to find a couple of funding sources explicitly targeted at women: The Jenna Ness Memorial Scholarship and the Corinne Jeannine Schillings Foundation (albeit both are smaller).

There just seems to be a lack of interest in including young men in these kinds of efforts. Gender disparities in study abroad are merely taken for granted. The result is young men lose out.

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Becoming Gendered

I do not believe there is discrimination happening against men in study abroad. Instead, it is more about messaging and perceptions, along with the mentioned funding issues.

It seems, in the mind of college boys, study abroad is something that girls do. Even the Inside Higher Ed article back in 2008 wondered if study abroad has become a “A Female Thing.” One study reported that a male who was going abroad got made fun of for being a “weirdo.” I can certainly relate; many of my friends thought I was pretty weird for moving to Italy and Korea. That same study suggested that there needs to be “intentional” efforts to “‘defeminize’ study abroad programs in the eyes of male college students.”

Women are more likely to be higher education professionals than men (60% of the sector’s workforce). A report in the Chronicle of Higher Ed highlighted how men in general are starting to feel like college isn’t for them. Likewise, those who work in study abroad are similarly overwhelmingly female, perhaps more so than the general numbers. In a sample of its members, the Forum on Education Abroad reported that 77% of international education professionals were women.

In the general workforce, researchers have found that once a profession becomes highly gendered towards women, men start dropping out of that specific line of work. The study concludes, “men’s avoidance of work in feminizing occupations is a credible mechanism for explaining swings in sex composition of various occupations.” These same effects may help explain why boys are missing out on study abroad.

I have even seen rumblings that travel itself has become gendered. One travel agency estimates that 64% of all global travelers are women. The same report found that women overwhelmingly make travel decisions and discretionary budgets. The ladies are simply leaving the men at home on the couch.

One recent viral screed illustrated this phenomenon. eigenrobot, an X account with over 201.2K followers, declared:

"travel" is fake

no one except lord myles has "adventures" when they travel

you are staying at a hotel, paying large sums of money to have a far worse experience than you could have in your own home and a far softer experience than you could have by spending a weekend in jail

Other commentators have started wondering about these new gendered travel dynamics. Paul Skallas, aka LindyMan, argues that “since mass travel became normalized, women became independent and got their own money we see travel is mostly a female hobby now.” VB Knives, a popular commenter on X, calls the change “the great inversion.” Building from this concept, of Hickman’s Hinterlands describes this trend as “women are now by and large more adventurous than men.”

These differences in higher education broadly and travel generally mean that the boys just aren’t going to study abroad in high numbers. It will take convincing them to break through. We should make the effort.

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Inspiring the Boys

Going back to the anti-travel take, the original poster explicitly questions the “adventure” notion of travel. I do think this perception can help us understand men’s modern aversion to study abroad. The experience needs to be understood as a journey, something that is adventurous, a kind of quest.

My own experience as a dumb 20-year-old abroad was full of adventure. One time my roommate and I hitchhiked back to our campus after missing the bus home. Another time, I was forced to sleep outside the bus station in Barcelona when I turned up without a hotel, and every hotel in the city seemed to be booked up. Luckily, I met a group of Polish guys doing the same thing. There are countless other stories from my time abroad.

I think promotional materials for study abroad should tap into the adventures to be had while gone from home. Posters and other inspirations can signal to young men that this is for them. I have an affinity for the old travel posters myself. We should key on these designs.

Another angle is through sports. One reason I also think that many college boys do not study abroad is fear of missing sports. Sports are central to so many American men. They would not dare miss a single college football Saturday or NFL Sunday. I don’t really have a solution for this other than studying abroad in the off season, like in the summer. I will also add that watching football abroad with your fellow Americans builds a kind of fellowship.

It’s not just watching sports, but also playing sports that might scare away college males from studying abroad. More males participate in intramurals or other college sports. For some students, sports are the main reason why they are even at the college in the first place. We need to reiterate that sports do not go away when studying abroad.

Most study abroad programs still have intramurals. Our American team got destroyed by the Italians in soccer when I was studying abroad. And in Korea, one of the funniest weekends was always the sports festival between my university (Yonsei) and our rival (Korea U). I also found a pick-up basketball crew during both sojourns.

The message for studying abroad should be that it gives more sports opportunities. This includes attending professional matches. The rise in popularity of soccer in the US should make studying abroad in Europe more attractive than ever. Why wait to see washed-up stars in the MLS when you can see them in their prime in the EPL or La Liga? Japan’s growing baseball dominance should excite a young American studying in Tokyo. When are you going to get a chance to see Yomiuri Giants vs. Hanshin Tigers?

The human connection is also important in studying abroad. The real treasure was the friends we made along the way, the cheesy line is right. I have to admit, I did meet my wife while studying abroad (we were both international students in Korea). While the Eat, Pray, Love mantra might be targeted at women going abroad, I don’t think we should simply let go of the appeal of human connection that might be attractive to men, too.

One relevant growing phenomenon comes from so-called Passport Bros. The Economist describes Passport Bros as “young Western men who travel abroad in search of better dating prospects.” Critics believe that this transgressive lifestyle choice takes advantage of power dynamics in less affluent countries.

I’m not here to debate the concept of Passport Bros nor to tell universities to start advertising the concept. Instead, I am highlighting that in other avenues, men have seen interest rise in going abroad. While very specific, I think meeting people should be something that is attractive about studying abroad.

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What Young Men Miss Not Studying Abroad

This conversation around study abroad is emblematic of a larger, changing culture in American boys. There have been growing concerns that young men are becoming disillusioned in this country. They drop out of the workforce, live with their parents, rarely leave the house, sit on the couch all day, and play video games until the sun comes up. Sometimes they are called NEETs, a derisive acronym that stands for “Not in Education, Employment, or Training.”

These growing concerns about arrested development have sparked more interest in recent years. The Young Men’s Conference is an upcoming conference targeting solidarity and support for young men. Speakers include both Democratic and Republican elected officials, researchers, and other thinkers. The American Institute for Boys and Men is “the first national organization committed to objective research and policy development to enhance the wellbeing of boys and men. Likewise, Jonathan Haidt, the well-known New York University (NYU) psychologist, has raised the alarm bells over anxiety or loneliness in today’s boys.

I am not going to pretend that studying abroad will heal every pathology that ills society. Instead, lessons learned and experiences gained during study abroad can be powerful tools for success. Being abroad builds resilience by necessity. We get forced to leave our comfort zone, try new things, and take on new responsibilities. There is a kind of independence gained abroad when untethered from what is familiar.

One way that young men do already get experiences abroad is through military service. There are around 221,000 American troops stationed abroad in a given year, which are overwhelmingly male. While being in the military and studying abroad are certainly different, the experiences can have similar effects.

I know just being in the military offers a certain kind of transformation. Troubled or lazy young boys become respectable and responsible men through service (I saw it in many friends who joined). Part of that transformation is moving, sometimes abroad. Mottos like Join the U.S. Navy, see the world are popular draws in recruitment.

The 1953 book When We Get Back Home from Japan by Bill Hume and John Annarino lampooned American servicemen returning to the US after being stationed abroad. From shoes to bedding to other cultural changes, the book highlights the transformation that we go through after living outside of the US.

In the classic movie Stripes (1981), Bill Murray’s character (Winger) tries to convince Harold Ramis (Ziskey) to join the Army. Funny enough, Ziskey was an ESL teacher, which is already a good way to get paid to travel via teaching abroad (this is what initially took me to Korea):

-They give you money.

-Who?

-The GI Bill. Borrow all the money you want.

-Will you shut up about the Army?

-You borrow the money, you buy a Winnebago. They ship it anywhere you want. You get lots of travel. Kathmandu, guaranteed.

-Yeah, dysentery guaranteed.

Granted, in the movie, the pair end up regretting their decision to join after a miserable experience in basic training. Eventually, they grow up and save the day. A mini version of this transformation happens when students study abroad. Both experiences can help young men avert becoming a NEET.

Become Bourdain

One of my idols growing up was Anthony Bourdain. His travel show really got me thinking seriously about visiting or living in the far reaches of the world. He advocated for moving, whether abroad or just somewhere else, to better yourself:

If I’m an advocate for anything, it’s to move. As far as you can, as much as you can. Across the ocean, or simply across the river. The extent to which you can walk in someone else’s shoes or at least eat their food, it’s a plus for everybody. Open your mind, get up off the couch, move.

The tragic end of Bourdain's life may not bring reassurance for his advice. Perhaps a lesson is that if one is too rootless, travel doesn’t fill the void of unhappiness. But the advantage of studying abroad is that people can try a different life while keeping their world at home. It is just a chance for a given period, a year, semester, or even just a few weeks. It’s the expat lifestyle lite, although studying abroad is certainly a gateway to real expat living.

There are growing movements of people taking Bourdain’s advice by escaping the US, finding work and lives abroad. Digital nomads have remote jobs in the US while living in other countries. Interestingly, data suggests that there are more male digital nomads than female counterparts (56% vs. 43%). This may factor into the aforementioned Passport Bro phenomenon. The point is, men seem to eventually want experiences abroad, but time and opportunity are limited.

In the end, I hope younger generations just have the same agency and opportunities that I had. They deserve to go on their personal hero’s journey, facing trials and tribulations and overcoming anxieties and hangups. So much of the toxic monosphere, like Andrew Tate, is just young men looking for advice and encouragement to improve themselves. Studying abroad is a healthy way to do just that.

Seeing the world through a new lens, beyond just travel, may even reaffirm their love for the US (missing football, big trucks, and free refills). But it may also help them see what is possible beyond the confines of this country (walking to the grocery store, taking public transit, eating bizarre foods). Both were true for me.

For all of these reasons, we cannot forget about the young men. They need our support, funding, and attention. Give them their adventure. We must find a way to get the boys to study abroad.

Note: Around the College Towns is my weekly links roundup article on urbanism and education. These posts mostly cover news that may have fallen through the cracks rather than the big events.

Palm Trees, Scam or Icon?

The organization Streets For All, an advocacy group focusing on better urbanism, recently released a video entitled ‘Are Palm Trees in Los Angeles a scam?’ It drew a wave of opinions, some positive, some negative. The take seemed to have wide support in the urbanist community. Max Dubler of California YIMBY posted, “Palm trees are bad. Chop them down and give Los Angeles some shade.”

Conversely, the take drew ire from others. LA in a Minute defended the palm tree in the city he covers:

The palm tree is the consummate symbol of Los Angeles; vertical symbols of relentless optimism everywhere throughout our horizontal city. And, like many people in L.A., they thrive even though they’re not native.

The online right, in particular, seemed annoyed at the video, decrying “progressives” or “YIMBYs” for the take. The California Post used the moment to take a potshot at a local candidate they don’t like (Nithya Raman, who is popular in urbanist circles).

For me, I actually don’t think a love or hatred of palm trees needs to be divided along political lines. This is not a left or right issue, even though that is what the internet is trying to make us believe. The debate is yet another display of how issues in urbanism do not neatly align with our culture wars.

In this case, I disagree with my fellow urbanist on this one. I like palm trees.

There are a lot of urbanists who seem to really emphasise function over form. It is somewhat of a divide within the movement when talking about building housing that actually looks good. A large portion of urbanists believe this issue isn’t that important. For them, these aesthetic arguments are just a NIMBY obstruction tactics. While I agree that this justification is often used to block housing, I also think that aesthetics do matter. You can see me railing against ugly dorms every week here (see links below).

In the case of the palm tree, the function-over-form urbanists see them as useless at best (they don’t provide much shade) and dangerous at worst (fire and debris hazards). I get these arguments; I would usually prefer to walk under a tree-covered canopy street (see my old Tweet below). Palm trees just do not create that kind of coverage.

At the same time, the vibes that palm trees give off are crucial to the identity of the area. Sun, surf, sand, and palm trees. Iconic. They look amazing under the sunset, providing a calming reminder of relaxation. Even if they were imported 100 years ago, they have grown to become icons for all of Southern California. Aesthetics matter. Palm trees are now part of what it means to be LA.

I’m not saying Southern California should only plant palm trees, just that we should not remove them nor consider them scams. One thing I do agree with the anti-palm tree crowd is that we need more Jacaranda trees. These native trees have beautiful purple blooms in the Spring. My former neighborhood, Old Towne Orange, is full of them, and I loved walking past the purple petals on my way to work.

The real problem with LA, and the entire state of California, is not the trees. We have stopped building with traditional designs that take into account the climate. Rather than just copy-n-pasting suburban sprawl, with wide lanes, far setbacks, and concrete parking lots, we should be building our society with the sun in mind. We can look at how ancient civilizations have long dealt with their own climate: narrow lanes, verandas, canopies, four-story buildings that cast shadows.

And if we want to look at something a bit closer, then consider the principles of Culdesac Tempe in the next state over in Arizona. It takes a lot of the old design aesthetics and funnels them into a modern American society, getting rave reviews from the urbanist community (I hope to visit one day for a future article). The building structures and layout design are what really matter. Trees are the dressing on top.

So, yes, let’s plant more trees. But no, palm trees aren’t a scam. They are form over function. Aesthetics matter.

@liveculdesacAt Culdesac, we're building cities for people! #city #cities #urbanplanning #arizona #urbandesign #suburbs

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Links I’m Reading This Week

Education

• Students are hacking online degrees to earn degrees in less than a year. This is a massive problem with online education today in the face of AI. This kind of thing just makes a mockery out of higher ed.

• In more ethical, shorter-degree news, ASU London offers three-year degrees in the UK. The Age of Conquest knows no bounds!

• NPR has a list of colleges that are a suck on the American tax dollar. They are mostly dumpy for-profit schools. I will have a future article on this topic.

• Switching to student housing, California spent hundreds of thousands of dollars per bed in efforts to tackle the student housing crisis across the state. It’s great we are getting more housing, but it is insane at the cost of doing anything literally here. Very frustrating place.

• Potentially, one issue with costs in California comes from entities trying to grease their palms. That seems to be the case with a canceled dorm project at Los Angeles Community College District due to improprieties in the bidding process.

• Sacramento State is trying to shed its commuter school label by making students live on campus for the first two years. The strategy is also likely a good revenue generator for the institution.

• On the opposite end, Pitt is now no longer guaranteeing on-campus housing for juniors. This change is part of the university’s growth strategy.

• In Wisconsin, they have an explicit program for students to live in senior housing while they study. Interesting initiative. I think we will need to see more of this with the aging of our population.

• University of Virginia is building on-campus housing for its MBA program. More apartment-like and aesthetically pleasing, this is what the future of student housing should look like.

• Likewise, Columbia’s newest dorm is certainly a beaut. Basically, it’s a gut renovation of an old, run-down dorm from the Union Theological Seminary. This is what student housing should look like.

• Juxtapose these with what we are getting down here in Southern California at UC Irvine. Not the ugliest dorm I’ve ever seen, but certainly not great. That distinction goes to…

• Evangel University, a tiny Christian college in Missouri, opened a new dorm that is one of the ugliest I have ever seen. I guess it does look exactly like the rendering. Hideous.

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Urbanism

• Airbnb has gotten into the housing development game. I don’t hate this. I see what they are proposing as a way to make better use of our spaces and as part of the ADU boom.

• Waymo is entering the Japanese market. I will be interested in seeing adoption there, as it is already transit-rich. A lot of urbanists are afraid of what self-driving cars mean for public transit. If Japan can successfully navigate the tech, then I would be hopeful.

• Malls might be making a comeback. I think we can continue saving malls if we build more housing around them rather than relying on everyone to drive in.

• Consultants misappropriated funds for the California high-speed rail project. I’m glad we found this out now, but with billions spent and years wasted, everything about this project is turning out rotten.

• of makes the case that city planning has too much public engagement. I 100% agree.

Car Free America

City Planning Has Too Many Public Meetings

Have you ever been to a public meeting about a city planning or transportation project only to ask yourself, “Why am I here?”. I have. And often times, I was the one leading the meeting…

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a month ago · 17 likes · 2 comments · Mark R. Brown, AICP, CNU

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Adaptive Reuse Corner

We are back with yet another edition of Adaptive Reuse Corner. Last week’s winner came from the old mill in rural Virginia. That was the one I chose, too. Great craftsmanship. No one wanted those rough commercial units. I get it.

Starting out for the week, we have a pair of lighthouses. One comes from Northwestern Pennsylvania, sitting right along the Allegheny River (A), for $1.3 million. The other comes from central South Dakota along the Missouri River (B), a beautiful part of the country I just visited when I went to Deadwood. That one is less than $250K! A deal.

Next, I have two schools. One is an entire campus of a former boarding school in the Berkshires area of Massachusetts (C). At $3 million, not a bad price considering what you would be getting. You can live out your Charles Xavier X-Men fantasies; just be forewarned about the upkeep of shuttered campuses. The other is a one-room schoolhouse in Fort Wayne, Indiana (D), with nice-looking additions for almost $700K. The owner even hopped on r/centuryhomes to lament having to sell.

I also found a couple old commercial properties. The first is a gorgeous brick bank in a small town in Nebraska (E). At just $85K, it probably needs a lot of work, but the insides do not actually look horrible. The other might be a bit of cheating; it’s an office in small town Illinois, with a residence on the second floor for $100K (F). These kinds of live-work units used to be very common across the country, not so much now. I wish we could bring them back.

The last selection comes from a church in the middle-of-nowhere Iowa (G). It hasn’t been converted to a residence, with the pews and altars still standing. For just over $100K, you can start your own cult religious revival!

Which do you choose? Look for the Adaptive Reuse Corner poll next week.

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Closing Time… Budget Your Own College

Andrew Piper is an AI and storytelling researcher at McGill University (whatever that means). He does seem to be doing some interesting work there. His vibe-coded The Socratic College Ledger is a small, experimental app that lets players budget their own college. The app promises:

A bare-bones humanities institute: professors, students, rooms, and nothing else you can avoid. Every dial below moves the tuition. The one that moves it most is the seminar cap.

I spotted Piper’s post over on X, where he said he was hoping to “mock-up… no frills humanities institute with just profs and students.” The design would not be about “big facilities,” dorms, libraries, or gyms. “Just the place where ideas and learning happen.” Laudable.

In the end, Piper realized a “brutal truth” for this vision: “the math doesn't work.” He just could not get the budget from ballooning for a college he envisioned. At least he tested his hypothesis, only to discover it’s not so hard to run a university! This might be a future university president training game.

Try it yourself. Were you able to create the college of your dreams within a reasonable budget? I also came up short, though my dream college is one with dorms, libraries, and gyms, so perhaps our visions just do not align on this one.

Note: Around the College Towns is my weekly links roundup article on urbanism and education. These posts mostly cover news that may have fallen through the cracks rather than the big events.

University to Shutter 200-Year-Old Museum

I’ve covered a lot of college closures here, which are actually somewhat rare, although becoming more common. What is not rare is universities making cuts to departments or programs. Something like this happens every day. But some cuts are more painful than others.

Drexel University in Philadelphia announced that it would shutter The Academy of Natural Sciences. At over 200 years old, the Academy is the oldest natural history museum in the US. Formerly called the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, it was founded way back in 1812!

Drexel has been in rough financial shape the last few years. In 2024, the university announced a $63 million operating deficit, partly due to a 15% drop in the incoming freshman class. Layoffs followed soon after. Now, the cuts seem to be continuing.

Closing such an important historic relic is a major blow to civic and even national identity. It does seem like there is local movement to save the museum. I hope they can do it.

The Drexel partnership was already the lifeline for the museum when the two institutions merged in 2011, back when the university was doing better financially. So there is perhaps a possibility of another entity helping the Academy to spin off into a stronger institution.

Universities selling, acquiring, or merging parts does align with my Age of Conquest in Higher Ed concept. Universities have become more business-like in recent decades. The corporate world has long seen hostile takeovers, monopolies, and conglomerative mergers. Higher ed is just having its own version now.

Sadly, museums are becoming a more common casualty in Higher Ed’s Age of Conquest. This year, DePaul University closed the DePaul Art Museum. Last year, Albright College sold off its Freedman Gallery for a needed cash injection. Fisk University, Randolph College, Rockefeller University, and La Salle University have all taken this art-selling route.

These issues can even hit public institutions. The University of Alabama closed its Mildred Westervelt Warner Transportation Museum in 2024, while the University of Arizona shuttered its Arizona State Museum that same year. The latter was supposed to only be temporary, but budget cuts have left the site in limbo.

While these kinds of university art deals are becoming more common, they still certainly draw outrage that can reverse the decision. Valparaiso University tried to offload its Brauer Museum of Art, but the backlash caused them to reconsider, and it remains open today. Similar stories happened at Brandeis University with the Rose Art collections at the University of Iowa with a Jackson Pollock painting. Hopefully, the Drexel-Academy story can be added to this list.

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Links I’m Reading This Week

Education

• Starting with some K-12 news: being in a top school district adds around 35% more to home costs. As someone who covers education and real estate, this is no surprise.

• MIT’s summer program for high school students has a lower acceptance rate than the Ivy League undergraduate admissions. The college admissions arms race is vicious!

• Back to college: the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal calls for a reinvestment in language education from US higher ed. I agree, but the problem is defunding and cuts. The job-ready craze does not align with national security.

• UCLA is covering public transport funding for employees making under $100K. Interesting, I always thought universities should do more for families; this is a good development.

• Minerva University, the experimental online and study abroad institution, is opening a full university system to expand its reach. They are quite a unique model in a sea of higher ed standardization.

• Another unique model comes from American College of Building Arts (ACBA), in Charleston, South Carolina. The college is one of the few still teaching classical traditions in design, architecture, and construction.

• In closing news, Stanford opened a research center in Korea five years ago; they are already shuttering it. If a school as affluent as Stanford cannot maintain this kind of program, then international education is truly in trouble.

• Moving abroad, Chinese universities are getting into the global branch campus game. I can tell you they are ready to replace the US in the vacuum we are leaving behind on the global stage.

• There is a new high-tech university in… Benghazi, Libya? The University of Benghazi campus has been shuttered during war, but has now been reopened after some stability. I guess the world is modernizing as we pull back.

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Urbanism

• Starting with self-driving news, videos of people sleeping while driving Teslas have regulators concerned. The company just seems totally irresponsible.

• In another Tesla story, fire departments worry Cybercaps don’t have steering wheels. Even though American fire departments have had bad instincts for urbanism, I think I agree with them here. Must have tactile handles.

• Tesla appears to have lied about fatal crash data. All of these stories have me worried that this company is sullying the entire self-driving sector.

• In other transit news, reports on a new Brightline along the Space Coast. This will mean Port Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex will be accessible by rail. Cool!

• The city of Berkeley is getting sued for trying to add a protected bike lane. Honestly, things like this make me believe that California is just an insane place.

• More complaining comes from Chicago, where NIMBYs are trying to derail the airport train. In a transit-rich city, this just blows my mind.

• In a place that does it right, a Japanese railway company makes more money from real estate than the trains. But that’s fine! The real question is why don’t we replicate that model here?

• In general urbanism news, the history of preference surveying is quite interesting. This is how we know people prefer traditional architecture over modern buildings.

• Frank Lloyd Wright house rotting in LA. It’s always wild to think how much we can let cherished things spiral here.

• Famous gold dome in my hometown of OKC sold at a police auction. This place was always iconic but also very dumpy. I do not remember its golden age. I hope someone can get it back there, but I have my doubts.

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Adaptive Reuse Corner

Back with another edition of Adaptive Reuse Corner! In this segment, I feature fun real estate finds that were once something else before being turned into a house. I’ll run a poll of the properties during the week. Last edition’s winner was a stunning cathedral conversion in Pennsylvania.

This week we have a lot of fun options. The first two are former commercial properties. One is a cafe in Washington (A) that the realtor thinks could make for a good single-family conversion; the other is what looks like a former bank in New York (B) that was already converted. They range from $100K to $150K, but both are in the middle of nowhere.

Next up, we have two schools, one in Kansas (C) and the other in Pennsylvania (D). While both have gorgeous bones, they also seem to be in pretty rough shape. The Kansas one doesn’t even have heating/AC. Good luck with that.

On the other end of the spectrum, you can buy this church in Chicago (E) that has already undergone an absolutely stunning conversion. But you get what you pay for in a great city at $6.5 million. Something a bit cheaper with the same kind of workmanship comes from an old mill in Virginia (F). The hard work is already done for under $500K.

The weirdest one I have this week comes from Texas, which is an old Boeing 727 in a hangar-like house (G). I think $1.8 million for the middle of nowhere in Texas is too steep, even if this is expected to fetch Airbnb rental income (Big Bend National Park is 20 minutes away).

I mostly want to focus on the US with this segment, but I randomly stumbled on a few conversions from abroad. I’ll just do a quick rundown for these: a water tower in Sweden (H), a container hotel in Czechia (I), a sea fortress in Denmark (J), and a castle in Ireland (K). Wow, all very cool. Europe seems to have some really interesting adaptive reuse.

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The last one I want to feature is not a home conversion, but rather an old general store that became a town library, via ’ X post. Rockton, Illinois—anyone ever been?

Note: No ‘Closing time’ today. This edition of Around the College Towns is already dragging. See you next week!

This article is the final installment of my United States Semiquincentennial Series. This series is a celebration of the country, its history, and the American people. See the previous editions on the Space Race, National Geographic, and the World Cup.

The topic centers on the show Deadwood. If you haven’t seen it (go watch it!), you can still enjoy the article for the history, urbanism, education, travel, and more.

Deadwood was a show that ran three seasons from 2004 to 2006, along with a movie in 2019, depicting life in an 1870s mining camp. The show, while dramatized, offers a glimpse into American history and our pioneering spirit, warts and all. The first season begins 100 years after the founding of the country, right during the Centennial, and 150 years before 2026’s Semiquincentennial.

Unfortunately, Deadwood sometimes gets lost in the shuffle of other great HBO series of the era, namely The Sopranos (another all-time show that I will have an article on in the future). To me, Deadwood should be considered alongside the greats. My wife and I like it so much that we took a road trip to the real-life town of Deadwood, South Dakota, this summer.

The town leans heavily into the identity of the show. Although the reenactors I met weren’t usually the biggest fans, saying that it wasn’t accurate. Of course, HBO had to dramatize for TV. Nonetheless, comparing both the historical and contemporary aspects of urbanism and education in the town of Deadwood has a lot to say about the trajectory of the entire country.

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19th Century Urban Planning

Deadwood gives the audience a view into the traditional style of American development. When we were first building towns, a street grid was laid out by the founders, with property plots marked off. As new people came in, they bought these lots and were able to build how they saw fit. This was the same with the pioneers and miners who first arrived in Deadwood Gulch in the 1870s, building it into the town it has become today.

In the show, Al Swearengen and Tom Nuttall considered themselves the town founders, two true pioneers, in Al’s view. They were some of the first residents, chopping down trees to make way for civilization. The pair both had choice locations for their bars, with Swearengen taking a leading role as a kind of anti-hero in the series.

Deadwood illustrates the incremental approach that American towns once had. The muddy mining camp starts out with a lot of tents and non-permanent structures. Eventually, more businesses and people move in, such as Seth Bullock and Sol Star, building up the camp into a town. We see an evolution from the pilot episode to the end of the series, with everything in the town filling in, from bars, banks, schools, more bars, and even the fire brigade.

The real-life version of Deadwood experienced this same kind of growth that the show depicted. Once gold was discovered in the Black Hills, thousands of fortune seekers flocked to the area in hopes of striking it rich. Businesses and buildings popped up along Main and Broadway, classic American street names that can be found in towns and cities across the country. Craven Lee, who was not depicted in the show, was one of the key real-life founders, helping to establish the city’s grid layout. Lee survives through a street named after him, right where I stayed during my trip.

Residential areas grew when locals were pushed out by commercialization. It simply made too much financial sense to have businesses in the central part of town. One new residential area even pushed out an old cemetery, moving it further up the hill to make way for more housing. The Presidential District (aka Ingleside) became the wealthy enclave of Deadwood’s most fashionable. Some of the beautiful large Queen Anne-style homes survive.

That same cemetery now sits up a hill at the edge of the residential neighborhood. Admittedly, it is a slog to walk to, but it makes more sense than in the middle of town. Could you imagine if a city tried to move a cemetery today? The site itself has become one of Deadwood’s most popular tourist attractions. Both Wild Bill and Calamity Jane are buried next to each other there, along with Seth Bullock and his wife, Martha.

While the historic downtown and surrounding residential neighborhoods keep the charm that comes with walkable cities, autocentric development has encroached on these American traditions. The Family Dollar, which doubles as a grocery store, was obviously more recently built than the rest of Deadwood. The dead giveaway is that it’s set back far from the road, surrounded by a sea of parking. In a literal transportation progression, the site of the old livery stable is now the main parking structure. Not even a town as historic and traditional as Deadwood could stop the onslaught of post-War planning.

Perhaps the show portended sentiments of American NIMBYism to come. In season one, Al put a stipulation on selling a plot of land that limited the new owners, Bullock and Star, from establishing a rival bar with girls and gambling; they oblige. Yet, it is not quite universal zoning, as another rival, the devilish Cy Tolliver, does sneak into town anyway with the Bella Union. Al also initially detested the installation of telegraph poles and wires (he would come around to their usefulness).

In the follow-up film, the mining tycoon George Hearst returns as the villain. He was attempting to install telephone lines to the town. Charlie Utter blocking this installation is a central catalyst for the action. In this case, the bad guy is trying to bring what will eventually become a necessity while the good guy fights against it. Retrospect.

Even some of the real-life town’s founding lore says that Deadwood was staked because some miners didn’t like the rules in a nearby campsite. In the town today, for the gunfight reenactments they hold in the middle of the town on brick roads, they need to set out orange cones so some moron TikToking while driving doesn’t barrel into the crowds.

There is an American identity of being rough-and-tumble cowboys and ranch hands. This ideal is glorified in Deadwood. But the perceived rugged individualism is usually a false suburban identity. Modern America is simply an easier place to live compared to 150 years ago. Still, the spirit of Deadwood endures, even if the hardships have ceased. Our urban planners should be reminded of that.

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Educating the Frontier

Education in the show Deadwood illustrates the progression of the town itself. At first, Deadwood was just a dangerous tent camp, where adventure-seekers wouldn’t dare bring their families. As the camp got more established, women and children started moving in, albeit still a dangerous place. How to educate children became a running theme in the show. It might seem strange that husbands would move their wife and children to such an unforgiving place. But this was indeed the reality of the real Deadwood.

Horace Mann started the Common School movement in 1837 as the state’s first secretary of its Board of Education. One-room schoolhouses began dotting the landscape across the country, even on the American frontier as we made our Westward expansion. Deadwood was no exception, building several grade schools and a high school in 1881. At that time, even graduating high school was rare, at under 3.5%, as shown in the chart below. Most adults (≈15%) ended up illiterate.

Schools then brought women to the frontier that was dominated by men. In the show, the town first brings in a teacher from back East. She barely lasted an episode, leaving after witnessing the newspaper being ransacked. The short tenure of teachers then was typical, relating to so-called Marriage Bars that prohibited married women from teaching. The show does not follow this real trend, and eventually installs Seth Bullock’s wife, Martha, as the town’s teacher.

It might not be so surprising that Deadwood had K-12 schools in this era, but the Dakota territories also had higher education during this period. College attendance was lower than 2% in the 1870s, meaning that Doc Cochran may have been the only character on the show with some kind of higher learning. In real life, Black Hills State University was established in 1883 in nearby Spearfish, just a few years after the series is dated. By the time the movie is set, what was then known as Dakota Territorial Normal School would be up and running.

These “Normal” colleges were typical across the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. They were explicitly founded to train teachers. The name “Normal” fell out of fashion, and most of these institutions transitioned into full universities by the 1950s. Some famous institutions started as these Normal institutions, such as UCLA and Arizona State University. My alma mater, the University of Central Oklahoma, was also a former teacher training school called Territorial Normal School.

It wasn’t just teacher training institutions popping up during this era. Over in Yankton, the much-hated rival town in the show, Yankton College was established in 1881. The Christian college had a storied 100-year history, but eventually closed down in 1984. The campus has since been converted into a Federal Prison. Talk about adaptive reuse!

The educational numbers would continue to rise through the turn of the century. While high school took off in the 1910s, it would not be until the post-War boom that higher education attainment soared. If you want to see what happens in later decades in the 20th century, check out my article on Dazed and Confused.

Today, there is still no higher education institution in town, only those in neighboring towns such as the Sanford Underground Research Facility in Lead. This facility is one of the deepest underground laboratories in the country, with bleeding-edge research on dark matter and neutrino physics. Likewise, Deadwood still has elementary and middle schools, but the high school has long been consolidated with neighboring Lead—certainly a sign of the times.

Newspapers Foundational to American Identity

Newspapers aren’t exactly schooling, but they have been crucial in providing an education to the citizenry, a principle dating back to the Founding Fathers like Thomas Jefferson. In a time and place where formal schooling was rarer, such as Deadwood in the 1870s, newspapers were central.

Alexis de Tocqueville, the famed French diplomat and philosopher, toured the United States in the 1830s. His musings offer key insight into the American sociopolitical background of the US during the day. One reason Tocqueville believed the US could stay so connected as a unitary identity despite spreading across a far and wide landmass was newspapers. Newspapers offered the country national cohesion during a disconnected period.

Deadwood, set just 40 years after Tocqueville’s journey, illustrates his point on newspapers. The Deadwood Pioneer, founded by A.W. Merrick, was an important institution for the town, with critical functions such as announcing town policies (as dictated by Al), reporting news (like statehood rumors), and keeping connections with civilization. Perhaps coming short on the last one: Dan Dority, Al’s right-hand man, complains there’s no baseball reporting in the newspaper.

In real life, the paper was actually named the Black Hills Pioneer, still founded by Merrick. It played the same roles as the fictionalized version. Although, the paper did not spar with Hearst, who was famous for his litigious strong-arming of rivals. Later, though, Hearst departed the Black Hills for good; he would purchase what became the San Francisco Examiner in 1880. When he was elected Senator, he handed it over to his son, William Randolph Hearst, who went on to be one of the most well-known newspaper magnates in US history.

Print catalogues were also key commercial outlets of the day. In season one, a piano gets delivered into Al’s bar via Montgomery Ward’s. This is the same catalogue that sold Sears Kit Houses, which debuted about 30 years after the show is set. Montgomery Ward’s survived as a department store until the 90s, dying with the lost malls of America. It had survived the Old West, but could not survive Amazon.

The written word remained a powerful American institution until other forms of media, first by the radio, then eventually TV, and now the internet. The excitement of getting a telegraph wire was depicted in the show. The telegraph operator, Blazanov, worked closely with Merrick and his newspaper. Al (eventually) recognizes the power of this information flow, co-opting both into the fold of his team.

In real life, Deadwood got a telegraph line to Cheyenne, Wyoming, in 1876. Deadwood Mayor. E.B. Farnam, who wasn’t as wormy as the show depicted, exchanged the first message with his counterpart there. Today, the Black Hills Pioneer survives, although it has changed hands numerous times and had various name changes.

Of course, the Hearst legacy survives in the media through Hearst Communications, which remains one of the largest media conglomerates in the country. Hearst’s wife, Phoebe Apperson Hearst, too, has left her mark on the civic cultural life with the Hearst Library and the Homestake Opera House, both in nearby Leads. I should also mention another captain of industry who left his mark from afar in Deadwood: Andrew Carnegie, whose library still stands there today. It is still beautiful.

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An Immigrant Nation Show

The American mythos is built on us being an immigrant nation. This national ideal is heavily felt in this series. The show was set in a period of a boom for immigration that would last 40 more years. Many of the main characters were immigrants from abroad: Sol Star was from Austria, Seth Bullock was from Canada, and Al was from England. Other side characters include Wu from China, Blazanov from Russia, and Jack Langrishe from Scotland. The Irish, Cornish, Swedes, and Germans all make up a good portion of the miners and pioneers, loveably called “hooples” by Al.

While these immigrant roots are often celebrated in the show and the US in general, the levels of migration we see depicted in Deadwood would not last. Growing anti-foreign sentiments swept the country in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The passage of the Immigration Act of 1924 put massive caps on migration, including from European countries.

The show also depicts the lives of the early Chinese migrants to the country. It was true that the town did once have a thriving Chinatown during this period. The plight of those coming from the Far East was much starker than that of the settlers from the East Coast. While it was no easy time for any population, the Chinese were treated as second-class citizens, sometimes just above slave labor for the so-called coolies, as illustrated by Mr. Wu’s operation in the show.

This was not a pleasant time to be Chinese in the US. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was passed just a few years after the show’s setting. There were consistent riots across the country where Chinese would be beaten and lynched, blamed for management undercutting their wages with foreign labor. These difficulties did not subside until after World War II with the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which opened the US back up to immigration.

But just like the spirit that drove Americans and Europeans alike to Deadwood, the Chinese held that same conviction that a better life awaited them across the Pacific Ocean. The Chinese even call the US “美国,” literally translated to “Beautiful Country.” I know this label had to be about the natural landscape, because it certainly wasn’t about how society treated the Chinese at the time. Surrounded by lush mountains, Deadwood, the Black Hills, and the entire Dakotas certainly are the Beautiful Country.

By the 1880s, there were over 200 Chinese in Deadwood’s Chinatown. At first, the Chinese migrants mostly focused on servicing the mining camp itself, such as laundromats, grocery stores, boarding houses, bakeries, and even opium dens. There was even a school to teach English to the migrants. In the film, Wu’s nephew speaks fluent English and acts as the translator. But the last of these early Chinese migrants to Deadwood moved away in 1931, with the Chinatown fading away with them. The old Chinese portion of the cemetery is all that remains of this community today.

American Tenacity

Being out in the Black Hills, you can really feel the pull of the West. Deadwood is an outpost among outposts. There isn’t much around other than the wide-open skies. The US has long had a sense of Manifest Destiny, the view that the small colonies on the East Coast would eventually spread from sea to shining sea. Of course, that was hubris then. But that hubris did indeed complete the destiny.

Deadwood was just one small example in a broad history of westward expansion. I’m sure the pioneering spirit of the day’s past made the region an even stronger draw. “The world ends when you’re dead; pain or damage don't end the world. Or despair or f*#%¡ü@ beatings. The world ends when you're dead. Until then, you got more punishment in store. Stand it like a man... and give some back,” Al says to Merrick, in a speech that oozes this tenacity.

During the time period of Deadwood, getting to the town wasn’t like a relaxing road trip through paved highways to a little resort hotel. It was a long, hard slog over rough terrain through dangerous conditions to arrive in the wilderness. The founders of Deadwood did indeed tame the wild, but the cost was staggering.

Countless lives were lost to this move, through disease, accidents, violence, and conflict. Native American civilization especially took the brunt of these forces, losing land, traditional territory, and an entire way of life. While the show Deadwood does not focus on Native American plight, the film Dances with Wolves, filmed nearby in South Dakota and parts of Wyoming, depicts the striking calamity that followed the Western movement.

Another key feature of the real town Deadwood that wasn’t depicted in the show was the constant disasters that befell the area. There were constant floods, mudslides, and fires. Deadwood, the town, was destroyed multiple times by these disasters, with all of the structures built at the beginning of the town lost in fires. The entire town is actually raised above the ground floor where these structures once stood.

Yet the people who made this journey must have believed in this pull of the West. There was riches to be made, or at least a better life found, at the end of the trail. The follow-up movie to the show begins with South Dakota’s statehood in 1889—the cast’s triumph. The real town stands as a memorial to this spirit today.

Deadwood does not survive in the exact same way as it once stood. Instead, it has been rebuilt multiple times over due to disaster and progress. Many of the historic structures that remain were built around the turn of the century, dating to the late 1800s and early 1900s. In the basement of Wild Bill Bar, patrons can see the exact site where Jack McCall killed Wild Bill Hickok, a crescendo moment for the show’s first season. The attraction sits in the basement because the town had to be raised to deal with floods. The structures from the rebuilds have been preserved, and the old downtown has been totally renovated.

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Kitschy Americana Tourist Town Today

Much of the show centered on local businesses, especially entertainment, from gambling to prostitution. This same spirit is still around in the town today. Well, not the prostitution, as far as I could tell. But there were casinos everywhere. And the mountains that once attracted settlers to the Black Hills 150 years ago now attract visitors for skiing, like Terry Peak Ski Area.

At first glance, during my trip to Deadwood, I was surprised that it had turned into a cheesy tourist attraction. Every hotel seems to have a casino, impersonators walk the street performing for the visitors, and contrived versions play on the show’s success (such as Mr. Wu, using the likeness of the actor with no real connection to Chinatown).

But what I found was fun. I like this contrived version of Mr. Wu’s! Sitting at the bar, drinking cheap whisky, hearing the whistles and dings of the slot machines all around me, while chatting with my wife, locals, and bartenders. The in-your-face cowboy bars with photos of Wild Bill, wagon wheels, and rope on the walls were actually fun. I was happy to give them my money, and they were happy to take it. It's all kitschy Americana, and I loved it.

In retrospect, I think becoming a tourist town makes sense in the trajectory of Deadwood. The show depicts a place that is obsessed with making money through gold, brothels, gambling, and bars. These are natural evolutions into the Disney version you can find there today, and it has even managed to stay a little rougher around the edges.

Deadwood is now a lovable place. Kevin Costner was actually so infatuated with the area when he was filming Dances with Wolves that he bought his own casino there. The town has leaned into the fanfare. In one casino, they had the show playing in the background. Too perfect.

This was no linear rise from the show to today. The town fell into disrepair after World War II, hollowed out by deindustrialization and the mines drying up. The Homestake Mining Company, founded by Hearst, had claims from the 1870s that technically lasted until 2001 near Lead. Deadwood was on the verge of becoming a ghost town until 1989, when South Dakota relegalized gaming there.

The population hovers around only 1,200 today, dwarfed by the incoming tourist numbers. There is affluence in being a resort town. Only 6.7% of people live below the poverty line, with the median housing value at $226,500 and $40,179 household income. The residential neighborhoods are beautifully restored, and I certainly saw my fair share of golf carts, snow skis, and giant trucks. Unlike the dangerous and chaotic times from the show, Deadwood now seems like a paradise for outdoorsmen.

The show Deadwood was just a dramatized version of the real town’s history. Both have a lot to say about American society. The town today remains a fascinating place. The history that the locals have embraced just adds to the enjoyment. I can say that going to Deadwood really took me back in time.

Note: Around the College Towns is my weekly links roundup article on urbanism and education. These posts mostly cover news that may have fallen through the cracks rather than the big events.

The Department of War’s War on Universities

The US Department of War released a public memo announcing a probe of 30 universities for “unauthorized technology transfer, intellectual property theft and adversarial exploitation.” The memo called for these institutions to do “immediate and comprehensive reviews of their academic, financial and research collaborations with foreign entities of concern.”

The Department of War cites an ongoing investigation into broader academia through a so-called “adversarial influences infiltrating” American universities. In particular, the “rebranded Confucius Institutes” have been flagged. The US has long been concerned about those cultural diplomacy programs connected to the Chinese government, with most of them being shuttered.

Now, I do not have a problem with military and intelligence agencies attempting to protect the country from actual threats. However, these efforts by the current Department seem just lazy and uninspired. It appears that the brass has just control-F’d Chinese or Russian institutions from the websites of various American universities. That is not intelligence.

I was also thinking that perhaps this was just retaliation against elite institutions that are seen as the enemy by the Trump administration at large. But that is not the case, as many of the Ivy League schools are missing, and places like Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, are included.

I have already written about my qualms with the administration’s “New and Improved Portal for Universities to Report Foreign Funding,” calling it “the dashboard that is a contextless mess.” That did not stop White House from touting how revolutionary and damaging to higher ed this data was. This new memo seems like much of the same, fantastical claims without much payoff.

I already included commentary about Bryant University in that previous article. The summary is that it is a low-level business and accounting program at a random Chinese university. This seems to be the case with many of these targeted institutions.

I’m not going to go through all 30 institutions and their partners (perhaps a future full post). Instead, I just looked at two from my home state of Oklahoma. The letter sent to the President of Oklahoma State was published by local media. Here is the opening:

The Department of War (DoW) is committed to fostering a collaborative academic environment while safeguarding the U.S. research enterprise from foreign exploitation. Oklahoma State University (OSU) appears to maintain an active connection with Fudan University. This entity is on the Department's most recently published list of foreign institutions engaging in problematic activities, pursuant to Section 1286 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019, as amended (https://www.cto.mil/fy25-ndaa-section1286-list/).

Fudan is one of the top institutions in China. It does not surprise me that the school has some kind of connection to the military, much like our top American schools. But the institution is much more than that, with full comprehensive programs. I’ve been to Fudan a few times, once for a conference on liberal arts in Asia. Hardly anything diabolical. And that tracks with the connections to OSU.

In 2011, the universities announced a partnership to “enhance their school's student affairs division and are especially interested in OSU because of its strength in student affairs.” They had seniors attend OSU’s International Symposium on Student Affairs, and had leadership keen on learning more about “Career Services, Residential Life, the Colvin Recreation Center, and the Edmon Low library.”

For Northeastern State University (NSU), the concern was with a partnership with Guangzhou College of Technology and Business (GCTB). Frankly, both places that most people probably have never heard of. I only know NSU because I’m from the state and did a summer camp there as a kid. No offense to either institution, but these places are not at the bleeding edge of technological innovation and advanced research.

This tracks with the programs actually taught. Professors from NSU were going to GCTB to teach undergraduate business courses like Leadership and Supervision and Negotiation and Labor Issues, Technology & Society and Project Management. The president of NSU defended the programs, saying they were “limited exclusively to undergraduate teaching and degree completion” and had “no research security risk… exposure of DoW-funded, sensitive, proprietary, or export-controlled research.”

This is all wildly mundane stuff. It is easily found and listed on the institutional websites. Yet, Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of War, wants the American people to believe he uncovered some kind of dangerous conspiracy. Perhaps one of the other 27 universities on the list does actually have some concerning partnerships. I just happened to choose the three with mundane business classes. Or perhaps there is just not a lot of there there.

This affair reminds me of the battles Senator J. William Fulbright fought in defense of his international exchange programs. He and Joseph McCarthy, the disgraced Senator who led the Red Scare, barbed over paranoid fears of anything foreign. Another Senator, Kenneth McKellar, pointedly warned that Fulbright’s “dangerous legislation” is “going to take our young boys and girls over there to expose them to those foreign ‘isms.’”

Of course, Fulbright believed in the strength of Americans and America. Luckily, his ideals won out. Now, these exchange programs are considered premier US public diplomacy efforts that advance our national interest abroad.

Like Fulbright, I, too, believe in these same strengths in our country and people. The current detractors in the Trump administration only echo the same doom and gloom that lost out 70+ years ago. I ask now: Are our institutions so weak that they cannot have partnerships with institutions from abroad? Is our intelligence so poor that we have to wildly throw darts at every possible target?

If you actually care about foreign influence and espionage targeted at American interests, then this Mickey Mouse operation by the US Department of War should be concerning. This is not intelligence; this is a brainless witch hunt. We can do much, much better than this.

The full list of institutions in the memo:

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Links I’m Reading This Week

Education

• Not to be too Trump-centric today, but a Federal court ruled that Marco Rubio’s attacks on international students for speech violations were unconstitutional. I previously wrote that these actions were un-American; glad the courts agreed. Kudos to for leading the charge here.

• Ok, back to the regularly scheduled urbanism meets higher ed promise: U of Arizona sees massive drop in freshmen, has to shutter some of its dorms. The K-shaped economy of American higher ed (I’ll have a future post on this).

• Columbia’s campus is still closed to the public. Such a bummer that my alma mater is abdicating a key part of its public good.

• The loneliness epidemic has hit college campuses. This is unconscionable to me: dorms, cafeterias, gyms, activities, festivals, events, sporting events, massive student body, clubs, colleges should be the antidote to the loneliness crisis.

• UCLA is cutting campus childcare. I always thought universities should do more for families. This is going in the opposite direction.

• St John’s College is changing its Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts to a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy, Literature, and the Natural Sciences. This will be an interesting space to watch, as there seems to be a growing resurgence of this kind of classic education.

• Sam Altman of OpenAI/ ChatGPT fame says college should only be 2 years. Terrible take from a guy who seems to be full of them.

• More Americans are doing their undergrad abroad. I love this. I hope more American students continue this trend.

• In more news abroad, I hadn’t realized this when it was first announced, but Saudi Arabia had planned for a university at the ridiculous NEOM megastructure. That is likely not happening with the collapse of the project.

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Urbanism-ish

• In annoying news from my current state, California, a dingy laundromat takes years to redevelop into housing in San Francisco. This is just the epitome of the problems in this state.

• In more California news, Bakersfield Mall is charging for parking spots closer to the entrance. I don’t hate it! But the town seems upset. Should I let them know about the 700+ page book The High Cost of Free Parking by Donald Shoup?

• Similarly, some countries around the world have pay-per-use elevators. Maybe this one I agree with the naysayers on. Elevators are much different than parking lots.

• There was a lot of autonomous vehicle (AV) news recently. First, Tesla revealed its new robo-bus.

• Toyota is getting into the self-driving game. Better late than never. I, for one, am hopeful about the Japanese foray into AVs. I would prefer not to have to rely on Tesla.

• Next, Uber’s president sees self-driving cars as an existential threat to jobs. But driverless trucks are already here. This will be the next intense culture war battle:

• The final piece of self-driving news: it seems that women are most against driverless taxis. I have no theory of mind on this. Is it just an artifact of the survey design? Or is there something actually to this? I would love to hear your thoughts.

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Adaptive Reuse Corner

I found a bunch of fun adaptive reuse this week. Sticking with the education theme, a middle school becomes a home in Michigan. This price is pretty steep for Michigan, but you would get your own basketball court! I can see the appeal.

If you don’t want to live in an old school, I have a couple more options for you. How about living in an old hotel, silos, cathedral, bank, or jail (pictured in order below)? These are all really fun, and some seem pretty reasonably priced!

I think my personal winner for today is this beautiful church redevelopment in Oakland. It is truly a stunner. I could certainly see myself living in these apartments:

And to close out the segment, I know this is not exactly adaptive reuse, but I had to flag this listing. Who wants to live in the Obelisk from 2001: A Space Odyssey? I think I’ll pass on this one.

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Closing Time… Goodbye to the Bohemians

There is always a romanticism around New York City. The classic story of a starving artist moving to the city from rural Ohio, moving into a dingy artist loft, and making it work on a shoestring budget. But that kind of true Bohemian lifestyle has mostly faded away as housing costs rose.

In more recent years, those kinds of artist lofts are more myth than reality. But there are still a few long-timers clinging to that old way of life. There is a new book chronicling this part of fading New York entitled Loft Law: The Last of New York City's Original Artist Lofts.

Joshua Charow, a documentary filmmaker and photographer, spent five years gaining access to these old lofts to interview “the mystery artists living inside,” as he calls them. With some persistence, people were happy to share their experiences. “I’ve been here for 58 years,” said one of the featured artists; some of the residents were in their 90s.

I am happy that someone is documenting some of the last remaining Bohemian spaces in New York City. As one of the artists said, “Our world as we know it now is disappearing.” And it is true; this kind of old world is just not something the younger generations can experience today. Charow's entire YouTube channel is worth a watch, taking viewers for a glimpse inside.

This all got me wondering: where do the new Bohemians go? Is there anywhere in the country with available inventory of loft space, with a critical mass of people/ galleries, living a car-free lifestyle, and all doing it cheaply? I am not so certain. Perhaps some deindustrialized Rust Belt city like Cincinnati. What do you think?

Editorial Note: This is a guest post in the “Summer School at College Towns” series.

runs the here on Substack, where he frequently writes insightful articles on cities, political movement building, messy coalitions, and even mushroom foraging. He also graciously stepped up to become moderator at r/urbanism. I appreciate that service!

Today on College Towns, he reflects on the housing situation in his alma mater college town, Santa Barbara, California. Enjoy. -Ryan

After five and a half years away, I returned to Santa Barbara, home to my alma mater, the University of California, Santa Barbara, for a wedding. While in town, I revisited the nearby college community of my youth, Isla Vista.

Everything I loved in Isla Vista remains the same. The sunshine feels like it could go on forever, and it mostly does: an average of 283 days of sunshine annually, summer highs of 77 degrees and winter lows of 65. On a random walk down the main street on a Friday night, you can see the most beautiful woman (or man, or anyone in between) of your life, over and over again. Everyone basks in a surreal natural environment, overlooking the ocean on one side, backdropped by the Santa Ynez Mountains on the other. Occasionally, studying happens.

Yet Isla Vista is both beautiful and haunting in its built stasis: A 1970s suburb, unchanging in response to current needs, slowly decaying into the ocean. Residents deserve better, students deserve better. The pathway to meeting their needs is a microcosm of the changes that will be necessary in aging college towns everywhere.

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Student Housing Situation in Santa Barbara

Isla Vista may be the most distilled version of a college town in America: More than 20,000 people, 90%+ college students, cram into approximately 0.6 square miles immediately next to the university. Its population density, above 30,000 people per square mile, rivals Brooklyn in New York City.

Yet Isla Vista’s built environment does not reflect its huge population. The median construction age of its buildings is 1975—more than twice the age of the median resident.

Students cram two, three, or four people into a room, paying $600-$1200 per person per month for the honor. Most of the area, an unincorporated corner of Santa Barbara County, allows one or two homes per lot. The very highest-density parcels allow a whopping 30 dwelling units per acre, 35 feet tall, and that’s only on a single lot in the entire area. For reference, this is about as dense as Brooklyn’s lowest-density row home districts; most NYC zoning districts allow buildings as tall as 85 feet with no residential density limits.

Of course, while the built environment remains unchanged, many of the beachfront houses are falling into the ocean.

A College Town Frozen in Amber

Isla Vista’s built environment may have changed very little over more than 50 years, but its population has changed a lot. Namely, it has grown. Between 1960 and 1970, during the heyday of housing development in Isla Vista, enrollment at UC Santa Barbara tripled from fewer than 4,000 students to more than 12,000. Since then, the student population has doubled again, to 26,000. But housing development froze in place in the 1970s.

As enrollment has gone up, so have rents. A median three-bedroom house in Isla Vista—most of the structures there!—rents for over $7,000 per month, $2,300 per bedroom or more. Trashy three-bedroom apartments will rent for over $5,000.

Coastal California, including Isla Vista, faces unique development challenges. Developers realistically should not build new projects directly on eroding cliffs that will fall into the ocean in the next 50 years.

But it’s equally hard to build more inland in Isla Vista, too: The notoriously anti-housing California Coastal Commission covers the entire community as well as the surrounding land owned by UC Santa Barbara, making zoning reforms to enable new development exceptionally difficult. In 2007, the Coastal Commission rejected a new Isla Vista Master Plan that would have allowed for more homes.

Today, six infill multi-family projects proposed under the Builder’s Remedy—a penalty imposed on Santa Barbara County for failing to follow state housing laws—face a similar hurdle. Three years after the projects were proposed, none have meaningfully moved forward.

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Common Challenges in College Towns

Isla Vista’s fundamental challenges resemble those of many college towns: Student populations rose for decades amid built environments that could not rise with them. Even as nationwide college enrollment falls, many college towns have fallen decades behind their housing needs, with longtime residents (many of whom arrived as earlier generations of college students) restricting new development at the expense of the future.

Meeting Isla Vista’s housing needs starts with the basics. Most importantly, Santa Barbara County should change its zoning to allow greater density. Low-slung suburbs of the 1970s can no longer meet the needs of America’s college towns; Isla Vista is only unique in its setting, not its need.

Outside the areas subject to immediate coastal erosion—for locals, the southwest-facing side of Del Playa—Isla Vista should allow eight-story buildings, at the very least. Students and the housing they need are not pollution; they are an essential part of building California’s future and ensuring access to its coast.

The playbook for revival in Isla Vista extends to every college town struggling with questions about its future. As many schools grapple with declining enrollment and more and more close up shop entirely, communities will have to choose whether they want to cling to a dying past or build a brighter future. Even if it doesn’t build, Isla Vista can coast on the gravity of an expanding UC system and its proximity to the actual coastline, forcing its students into ever more dilapidated and expensive homes. Other college towns don’t have the same luxury.

Isla Vista’s eroding coastline provides the most dramatic image of housing stock obsolescence, with homes falling into the ocean. But in every college town, and in many other cities, an aging housing stock fails to meet our future needs. College towns should seize the opportunity to build while they still have it. Maybe the next time I visit Isla Vista, I’ll be lucky enough to see some cranes amid the endless blue sky.

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Note: Around the College Towns is my weekly links roundup article on urbanism and education. These posts mostly cover news that may have fallen through the cracks rather than the big events. Since I had back-to-back guest posts, this edition will be a bit longer. Enjoy.

Bears and Pigs and College Students, Oh My!

This week, The New York Times had a (sort of) humorous story about college students that I saw a lot of higher ed people discussing. The article’s setting is Cornell University, where the Upstate New York Ivy League school recently banned students from processing wild game in dormitory kitchens. What prompted this new policy? Well…

One Saturday last September, two Cornell University students plopped a bear carcass on a table in a communal dormitory kitchen and began to carve it up. They planned to make “black-bear pastrami,” as one of them described their plans later.

Yes, the students slaughtered a bear in the dorm kitchen. Apparently, the students were hunting enthusiasts and legally shot and killed the black bear since it was open season. I know there are likely vegans and vegetarians disturbed by the story (and the photos circulating do look gory), but the process is fairly typical in hunting circles. It just happened to happen in a shared dorm kitchen.

The students defended themselves on a hunting podcast called The MeatEater Podcast. “We were really diligent in reading all of the rules, you know, regulations. We made sure we did everything by the book,” said Aaron Chin. Their plea was basically that there was no explicit rule against slaughtering a bear in the dorms.

This story illustrates some of the ridiculous experiences that come out of college campuses. It is one reason I loved my own time in college! It reminded me of my first job after my undergrad as a Leadership Consultant for my fraternity (Acacia) in Indianapolis, Indiana. This job had me traveling to college campuses across the country (fun job for a 22-year-old), helping or starting local chapters, and also dealing with disciplinary issues with things like hazing.

One day, headquarters got alarming news from the Penn State chapter. The university’s Greek Life director told us that our boys had slaughtered a pig in their basement. If that weren’t enough, they also invited the entire chapter and even neighboring sororities to watch. We were horrified, thinking it was some kind of disturbing ritual sacrifice. The next day, they sent me and a couple of other reps to State College, PA, to investigate.

Down in Happy Valley, we met with the university officials and interviewed much of the chapter. What we pieced together was not dissimilar from the Cornell story. The chapter had some country boys from Pennsyltucky (self-described), the lingo for rural counties in the state that traces cultural roots to Appalachia. They had actually followed the rules and norms in processing ham. They just did it in the fraternity house and with an audience.

In the end, the chapter received a slap on the wrist from the university. The headquarters basically told them to never do something like this again or else lose their charter. The chapter had a pretty wild reputation, even amongst the seasoned fraternity headquarters. They were eventually suspended from operations due to hazing and other misconduct, according to Penn State.

Things like hazing are far more common and dangerous than processing pig or bear meat. These kinds of bizarre stories just capture an audience. They are just part of the totality of happenings in a college town. Young people from different cultures making dumb decisions together, as long as not too consequential, is exactly what college is for.

Links I’m Reading This Week

Education

• In college housing news, Liberty turns old dumpy hotel into dorms. This kind of conversation has become quite common in higher ed. Even when I was an undergrad two decades ago, my university recently purchased a hotel as a dorm.

• In California, Fresno State is building its first on-campus housing in 50 years, while Long Beach City College is building its first on-campus dorms ever. California is bonkers: 50 years of growth and just now building housing.

• Shuttered college dorm to become affordable housing in Philadelphia. This is a perfect adaptive reuse of closed college campuses.

• Florida Tech is opening its largest dorm to ease the housing crisis. It’s just too bad the building is utterly ugly. It seriously looks like an Amazon distribution center.

  

• The fastest-rising housing markets are all basically towns with colleges. So I do not expect the housing struggles around colleges to end anytime soon.

• Stanford backs off Flock cameras after outrage. I wrote previously about how the university was getting pushback over its surveillance deal, but I am starting to soften my stance (perhaps I will write a longer response as to why).

• ASU launches school for content creators. Honestly, I do not hate it. If this is what students want to invest their time and passion in, then universities should oblige. I may have to do a deeper dive on these types of programs in the future.

• UCLA wants to add shade infrastructure across LA. I am glad someone is trying, but it is pathetic how little the city leaders actually care about this issue.

• New study abroad targets? Bored retirees. Now this is interesting. With the looming population cliff, there will be a dearth of 18-year-olds. At the same time, we are going to have an excess of seniors. More universities should try this.

• Not every person in the older generations is financially comfortable. Some Boomers are saying that they cannot retire because of student loan debt.

• There’s a new college entrance exam that promises to return to the classics. This is another sign of the divide in educational philosophies. I have a planned article to break down this issue in more detail.

Urbanism-ish

• LA’s airport people mover is nearly done but still facing delays. We already missed the World Cup. We should get it open by the Olympics, but anything is possible in this city. Pathetic.

• In more bad news from my state, California must get rid of its double-decker trains. We are letting another icon die due to overregulation and bureaucratization.

• Further, California is getting sued by Teamsters to keep self-driving big rigs off the road.

• In other parts of the country, a state rep in Pennsylvania wants to ban automated public transit (a Democrat, no less). Short-sighted! Naked rent-seeking is one reason we cannot escape our terrible transit ecosystem in the US.

• While we stumble with basic transportation here, Russia wants to build a train route to India. Russia→ Turkmenistan → Iran → Afghanistan → Pakistan → India. Well, that would certainly be an adventure!

• It’s not all good news abroad, though. In South Korea, Seoul’s nightlife is grappling with young people’s new temperance tastes. The old bar district I used to hang out in is “not what it used to be.” Many such cases for things from my youth. Bummer.

• In the adaptive reuse corner, a church-turned-nail-salon for sale as a single-family home in Wisconsin. You can also live in a train in Washington. I love adaptive reuse!

  

• An author argues the national housing crisis is a moral problem for churches. Yes! Let the churches build for their parishioners and communities.

• In other self-driving car news from around the world, China is banning blue lights to indicate self-driving mode. When the blue lights were on, other drivers would know the car is being driven by a robot. I like this concept. It gives drivers more signals. Alas, it looks like it is gone.

• Volvo removes LiDAR. The company is saying that their regular sensors are safe enough. It does make me a bit nervous, though. I will have a future article on how these impact road safety.

• The number one most feared public safety issue by Americans: traffic violence. While also true around the world, the numbers of people who fear road-related accidents in the US are much starker. It makes sense; our roads are very dangerous.

Closing Time… New Professor Show

A couple of weeks ago I posted about Amy Poehler fantasizing about being a professor. Well, it seems the thought must have been on her brain because a new show was in development where she will be an academic. Dig will star Poehler and Hugh Laurie as archaeologists taking students on an expedition.

The showrunner will be Mike Schur, who will reunite with Poehler, having formerly worked together on Parks and Rec (a great show on small-town politics). Schur has a murderers' row of heartfelt sitcoms: The Good Place (a great show that taps into academic philosophy), A Man on the Inside (which I almost wrote an article about on the season it was set at a struggling college), Brooklyn Nine-Nine (probably my least favorite, though it’s fine), The Office (an all-time TV show).

I am looking forward to seeing how Poehler, Schur, and the gang depict the academy. We already have Indiana Jones as the iconic archaeologist professor depiction. Will this show add to the cultural relevance or fade into obscurity?

Editorial Note: This is a guest post in the “Summer School at College Towns” series.

Matthew J. Camp, PhD, is the founder of Campfire Strategies in Massachusetts, helping nonprofits develop political relationships, community power, and sustained engagement to advance their missions.

He served as Vice President of Education Policy at the Commission on Independent Colleges & Universities in New York. He spent 20 years in government and community engagement at Columbia University and Princeton University. His research focuses on higher education lobbying.

Enjoy. -Ryan

On August 3, 2026, U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon released a “national call to action” to universities to describe “to the American public your commitments to rigorous teaching, pathbreaking research, and national service,” continuing the Secretary’s attempt to align higher education with Trump administration goals.

In response to administration challenges like these, and the urgent need to recoup lost research and development dollars, some institutions doubled or even tripled their government relations budgets. But is writing bigger checks to lobbyists the best way to shore up higher education’s future?

The problem is, colleges tend to put time, effort, and money towards government and community relations in a reactive way, as a response to negative public policy. Indeed, my last two government relations positions at universities were created as reactions to deleterious state policies.

In addition to governmental relations, higher education should do more community engagement: a deeper, less transactional, and more service-oriented proactive relationship building. This allows a college to make strong inroads to elected officials and governmental agencies for the long run. It is valuable to not only develop crucial staff relationships, but also to connect to local officials who often move up to higher office. And it’s valuable to boost eroding student belonging, support communities and the health of our democracy, and help rebuild the lost trust in higher education.

Lobbying—the First Amendment right to petition government—is necessary and vital in a healthy democracy, but a deeper community engagement strategy is as important today because politicians from the left and the right target colleges as not doing their full public service, citing, among other factors, ideological narrowing and high tuition.

We see the Trump administration implementing gainful employment rules designed by the Obama administration. We see Republicans and Democrats at federal and local levels pushing endowment tax bills, and bills to revoke nonprofit status. We’ve seen communities advocating for payments in lieu of taxes and community benefit agreements with universities and even the newly opened Obama Presidential Center in Chicago.

The federal government may be creating a tsunami of challenges for higher education right now, so not losing sight of “the local” is more important than ever. Universities must prove themselves to their local communities, elected officials, students, and families. A thoughtful community engagement strategy can do this if it is proactive, positive, and sustained.

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Add-On vs. Core Competency

Many universities are doing notable community engagement work. Hartwick College in New York places students in local nonprofit organizations and governmental agencies, with some undergraduate students even running for mayor. Tufts University’s Tisch College of Civic Life is a national leader in the study and practice of civic engagement, with students serving k-12 schools and the medical profession. And the University of Texas at Austin’s Annette Strauss Institute for Civic Life keeps the University and its students deeply rooted in Texas state government and the Austin community. The All in Campus Democracy challenge and its partner Campus Compact give schools tools to embed voting and civic action within all elements of the student experience. For example, Susquehanna University in Pennsylvania went from a below-average participation rate to an impressive 75% student voter participation rate thanks to All In.

Community engagement should be a core competency of any college student to boost civic readiness. Colleges that place students in community, government, and policy organizations offer students career pathways and a look into how our civic world works. Place students in state and local government; give them credit and give them stipends. Those students will be more likely to vote and less likely to be jaded by politics. They’ll feel connected. They might even be happier citizens—and happier alumni.

Institutions have the structural tools to make this happen. In addition to linking tenure to community engagement, colleges can leverage their federal work-study funds. Federal work-study rules require that colleges must use at least 7% of their work-study allocations to employ students in community service jobs such as reading tutoring. Spending work-study funding this way is a great way to build local rapport and student experience. It is all the more important to demonstrate impact given recent administration and Congressional calls to end work-study as a whole.

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Citizens, Not Just Workers

The debate about the purpose of higher education underlies this discussion, and nearly any major decision made by higher education leaders. Should higher education prepare students for jobs or to be well-rounded citizens? I argue it can be both, and community engagement is the perfect way to bridge the two goals.

On the one hand, one can’t blame higher education leaders for recalibrating their internal operations to rank higher in US News or Money Magazine’s list of best colleges for the money (disclosure: I did the data work on an early version of the latter). And one can’t blame leaders for adjusting their degree programs to avoid getting hit by gainful employment regulations.

On the other hand, it’s unlikely any college president would be able to sleep at night knowing that they were preparing students to just be cogs in the economy, which is changing by the minute due to AI. Colleges’ role in critical thinking and civic engagement is even more important given the rise of AI, which is better at the “whats” than the “hows” and “whys” of education. Enlightened leaders like Williams College President Maud Mandel understand the what/how difference and cultivate campuses as spaces to grapple with complex and conflictual ideas, teaching students “how to think” rather than “what to think”, and have civil, civic dialogues. Universities can be places for critical thinking, questioning, and yes, protest.

Since governmental support is no longer guaranteed, and now comes with many strings attached, colleges must support each other and show civic leaders the value of higher education. We need local leaders to go to bat for us. Show them data demonstrating that when a small private college goes under, the whole region suffers. Colleges have a tendency to split apart and compete when funding shrinks or when going gets tough. This is a counterproductive strategy; colleges should instead band together in regional, cross-sector coalitions across public and private, large and small.

Colleges can then remind elected leaders that college towns are unique places, ready-made to build community, and are rare intergenerational, interdisciplinary, and walkable places. They are local economic engines. They bring people together and are “third place” bastions against the loneliness epidemic by offering communities arts, sports, skill building, and even help with farms and home gardens. More Americans, especially our local civic leaders, need to see and feel these benefits, so open your doors and melt down your iron gates. As Walt Whitman, the poet of democracy, said, “Unscrew the locks from the doors! Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!”

Mutual Transformation

Community engagement is not a one-way street. It is open, reciprocal relationship-building. A university shouldn’t throw their students at a community-based organization or civic group for its own sake. Students must be given training, guidelines, and accountability to ensure that they are not a burden on the external organization. Universities can place students to build capacity at these local groups, which include elected offices and education departments stretched thin.

A deeper community engagement changes the student, the community, and the college. This work can be humbling for an institution of higher education: the community organization might not want any help, or it might desperately need the help, but on its own terms, not the university’s. Higher education officials can start by listening, doing their due diligence on community needs—not unlike what a good and responsive elected official might do. Being present and showing up is crucial. It’s no wonder, then, that President Mandel considers herself in—and of—the community.

Editorial Note: This is a guest post in the “Summer School at College Towns” series.

The guest post comes from Seth Zeren of Build the Next Right Thing. He is a recovering city planner turned neighborhood real estate developer, advocate, and educator based in Providence, RI. Seth has been a high school science teacher, an adjunct lecturer in real estate and planning, and co-founded Neighbors Welcome! RI, Rhode Island’s state-wide pro-homes advocacy organization.

Frustration with the trajectory of our cities and towns has led Seth to focus on the “education problem” — that educational institutions haven’t kept pace with changing demands from professional practice. Seth has a new podcast building on these themes called The New School for City Builders. Seth has also written on the intersection of Strong Towns, CNU, and YIMBYism here and here.

Enjoy. -Ryan

I wrote this piece a couple of years ago—a bit cri de cour and a bit Martin Luther’s 95 Theses—in an attempt to crystalize my critique of the state of “professional” education for the City Builders: the architects, engineers, planners, developers, city managers, and civic leaders who together (though rarely in collaboration) build and manage our cities and towns. It has also formed the foundation of my efforts to imagine and build new educational institutions that would approach the training of City Builders in a different way. That enterprise is best seen in my new podcast: The New School for City Builders. Thanks to Ryan for letting me republish this for his audience.

The Manual Says…

About fifteen years ago, fresh from graduate school, I got my first job as a planner in a city outside Boston. I arrived at my basement desk excited to help my new city to meet the challenges of housing affordability and climate change.

A few weeks later, a group of us planners was in our windowless conference room working on ideas to improve the economic vitality and walkability of one of our village centers. Joining the planning staff was also a young city engineer, also in his late 20’s. And then the “no’s” started.

“No, we can’t put a crosswalk there.”

“No, we can’t add a stop sign there. We don’t have the MUTCD warrants.”

“The who with the what there?” I found myself replying.

“The manual says we can’t put a crosswalk or stop sign there,” he replied as if that was the end of the conversation.

“But you get what we’re trying to do here? What would you suggest?”

“Don’t change anything,” he replied, “and by the way if you do, it all has to meet ADA and have 100% stormwater capture.”

“But it doesn’t do that now…” I said, “Let me guess:”

“The manual says…” he filled in.

We were barely able to communicate, so different was the language of our specialties. A slow realization dawned on me that we didn’t even share a coherent idea of what the city is and what we’re trying to do. No wonder we found ourselves at cross-purposes again and again.

I would go on to have many conversations like this, not just with our city engineer, but also with the fire marshal, the conservation planner, the police traffic lieutenant, the public works director.

I also worked closely with many of the architects and developers working in our city. Part of my job was to review projects for zoning compliance and identify what relief they might require. And I realized these architects also spoke a specialist jargon and designed buildings like private sculptures.

Similarly, the developers could be myopically focused on their piece of land, their project, their profit, seemingly unaware or uncaring of the long-term collaborative goal of building a good place.¹

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City-Builders in Silos

My experience inside city government (and since on the outside as a developer) is that our city-building professions–architects, planners, engineers, developers, etc.–lack shared purpose, goals, vocabulary, or even a common understanding of just what a city or town is.

And perhaps this shouldn’t be surprising:

Architects are trained in the school of arts and architecture; the engineers are over in the engineering college; the planners are at the school of public affairs and government; the developers are in the business school; and the budding activists are over in the sociology department.

Separated in silos, you can get an engineering degree without learning anything about what a city is. You can get an architecture degree knowing nothing about development and a business degree in real estate development without learning anything about construction.

A Generation After the New Urbanism

Over thirty years ago, a nascent movement calling itself the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) challenged the then ascendant way of building cities and towns. Over the generation that followed, many ideas that were incubated within the movement—mixed-use districts and form-based zoning, the missing middle and accessory dwelling units, transit-oriented and traditional neighborhood development, complete streets and tactical urbanism, highway removal and parking reform—have become mainstream ideas in the city-building professions.

But over that same time-frame, there has been little progress in reforming the academic institutions that train our city-builders. Other than a select few schools (Notre Dame, Andrews University, and the University of Miami architecture programs in particular), it’s fair to say that most schools and faculties are indifferent to or hostile to the New Urbanist movement.

This hostility, I think, comes from a clash of very different cultures and institutions. New Urbanists are practice-oriented and focused on building better places right now, with all the messiness and compromise that entails. Many new urbanists focus on architectural styles that some might deride as historicist or pastiche. Promotion in academia, in contrast, depends on specialist research output and the goodwill of your peers. Many full-time academics have never worked outside the academy and are skeptical of New Urbanists’ close ties to for-profit developers and willingness to work in suburban contexts.

As a result of this divide, the New Urbanist movement has grown, built, thought, and written largely outside the academy. New Urbanist-friendly academics are few and far between. A student is more likely to be introduced to “urbanism,” whether new or traditional, through a part-time lecturer coming from professional practice, than a full-time faculty member.

It is also apparent to me now that this is a real problem. Our city builder professionals no doubt want to build thriving places people love. And our persistent failures to do so are deeply frustrating to many of us. The way we teach our city builders is not only failing our cities and towns, it’s also failing our students. What we teach them matters. How we teach them matters.

There are some 120,000 licensed architects in the US and 28,000 students enrolled in accredited architecture schools. There are around 40,000 city planners and 6,000 students enrolled in accredited planning schools. And there are around 300,000 practicing civil engineers with 20,000 degrees in civil engineering awarded each year. There are at least 3,000 counties and 20,000 municipalities across the US.

By way of comparison, CNU has just 2,600 members. Strong Towns has a little over 5,000.

A self-selected elite cadre of professionals—the “navy seals of city-building” as some New Urbanists self-identify—may forge brilliant new ideas and build a few excellent projects. But that isn’t going to scale (on its own) to implementing reform across the other 98% of America.

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Saving the World is a Team Sport

Humans have built cities, towns, and villages for many thousands of years. They are “human habitat”—places, like the beaver’s dam, that we shape to support our safety, productivity, sociability, and flourishing. Given the centrality of cities to human life (they are where most of us live today anyway), it should be little surprise that many of the hardest and most impactful challenges we face today are also “urban.” From housing affordability to mitigating and adapting to climate change, from economic prosperity and innovation, to public health and civic cohesion, the challenges that our cities face today require responses that cross disciplines, span government, civil society, and business, and defy easy solutions.

When I work with students trying to figure out what they want to be when they grow up, I like to remind them that “saving the world is a team sport.” In hockey, football, soccer, etc., people play different positions (defense, offense, special teams, causing trouble, coach, etc.) but share a common goal. When those different positions work together, you can move a ball down the field. Indeed, a team is likely to be better with a bunch of different personalities and skills.

Responding to our urban problems is also a team sport. The need for technical specialists isn’t going away, because cities are truly complex and have many specialized systems to allow them to function. But, we need many more generalists who are adept problem solvers, managers, and leaders. And both generalists and specialists will need a shared understanding of the project of city building and management—the game they are playing together—so that they can advance the ball down the field.

Toward a New Way of Educating City Builders

What would it take to make it easier to learn, practice, and teach the knowledge and skills for building lovable places? I think that reform must include at least these foundational principles:

• Integration of the city-building professions–We must re-gather the specialist disciplines around city-building as a shared enterprise. No longer can we put the education of civil engineers, architects, developers, planners, etc. in separate silos across the university.

• Shared core curricula–To create humane stewards for our cities, we must bring students into the long conversation about how and why we build, the nature of cities and their predicaments, the relationship between ourselves and society, the balance of liberties and responsibilities, and so on through a common body of texts and experiences.

• Practice orientation–To teach city-building as a craft, the curriculum must be practical, rigorous, hands-on, and mindful of its history, present needs, and future evolution. Practice experience must be valued among the faculty.

Having read this far, you may be excited by the prospect of taking this reform program to our existing academic institutions. There would be great power in repurposing their faculty, students, buildings, and prestige. So how do we do it?

We don’t.

The truth is that legacy academic institutions are too hard to change. Colleges are defined by being a collegium of academic researchers. Universities center the creation of new knowledge. Tenure protections, disciplinary turf protection, promotion based on research output, and the critical culture of academia all push against the essential reforms above. Colleges are further constrained by their bureaucratic structure, where action dies in an ever-expanding process, while keeping up with elite fads prevents long-term strategic transformation.

So instead of waging a multi-decade campaign on the hostile soil of the academy… let’s recognize that it’s time to build something new.

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A New School, a New Type of School

When I have shared the above ideas with people, I am often asked, “Why is building a new school the right idea? Why not a new series of online trainings? Or summer programs? Or weekend workshops? Or apprenticeships? Why not a loose confederacy of all those things cobbled together into something like a degree program?”

I like all those ideas. They are worth doing. And doing at least a few of them will help us get off the ground. But they cannot be a replacement for building durable, physical institutions.

City building is not a tech startup. Cities and towns are one of the oldest activities of human craft, art, and politics. We need durable institutions that can carry this lineage forward with fidelity, confidence, and adaptability. A physical school builds a community of learning and practice. Students and faculty are strengthened, tested, and supported by their cohorts. It will be a place of pride, a symbol, and a gathering place for city builders in practice across the country.

The second reason for a physical school is that we’re not going to stop licensing and certifying architects, engineers, and planners. Credentials can matter even to developers and public sector managers. Having a license or a stamp provides substantial power. And right now, nearly all these stamps are coming from graduates of schools teaching the old siloed way of city-building.

The path to licensure comes through obtaining a degree in an accredited program. To reform the city building professions, we need to build schools that can (eventually) obtain accreditation and produce young professionals on the path to licensure.

And the third reason is that the way to spur change in our legacy institutions is through competition.

Olin College of Engineering, founded in 2001, is an instructive example. The school’s founders observed that in most electrical and mechanical engineering programs, students spent three years in math and science lecture courses before getting into a lab or workshop. American engineering graduates were getting a degree in applied science. But they struggled when they went out into the workplace because they had little knowledge of product development, entrepreneurship, or the factory floor.

At Olin, they redesigned the curriculum so students are getting their hands dirty in project-based learning from the first semester. They still get all the same knowledge as a traditional program with much more experience in design, manufacturing, and entrepreneurship. Olin now exerts a competitive force on other schools to keep up with their curricular and pedagogical innovations and hosts summer programs for the faculty of other schools to learn their techniques.

Our new schools will likewise be able to innovate in curriculum and pedagogy, and then share those lessons broadly so that many institutions and their students can benefit.

How We Can Do Things Differently

• Experiential, not just classes—Education shouldn’t just consist of classroom work. Students will work on construction sites, spend a day studying a single building, or walk across a whole city. Short courses will allow intense focus on a topic and study-abroad terms in cities around the world will allow students to see and feel how other people live and bring those lessons back to their future work.

• Rigorous, practical, project-based—The curriculum and pedagogy will emphasize practical skills equally with theory. Students will work extensively on real world projects and learn from active practitioners. Expectations will be rigorous and grading hard–not everyone will make it. We want graduates to be known and know themselves to be excellent, hard-working, and resilient.

• Cross-disciplinary—We will bring together disciplines that often operate in silos to learn together so that engineers, architects, activists, planners, public administrators, and developers understand each other and can collaborate effectively.

• No tenure, teaching focus, institutional neutrality—The tenure system has laudable goals but creates perverse incentives for faculty to check boxes, rack up publications, minimize teaching, and not rock the boat. We will follow in the path of other schools, including Olin College, in awarding 5-year, renewable contracts to faculty based on student development, research, practice, and institutional service. Student learning, development, and achievement are the principal goal and metric of the institution and the faculty. Faculty and student speech and independence will be protected through rigorous principles of institutional neutrality.

• City-building as a craft—City building and management involve technical crafts with deep lineage: architecture, engineering, accounting, construction, etc. In each case, reform is needed within the specialization as well as a recovery of lost ways of doing things. Our curriculum will build on the past, rather than seeking novelty for its own sake.

• A common humanities core—a core curriculum integrating history and philosophy, literature and drawing, rhetoric and reasoning, economics and finance will prepare students to be humane stewards and not simple technicians or profiteers. Common courses taken by all students build shared understanding of our collaborative enterprise. Learning how to learn is essential to preparing students to be generalists, able to learn and manage between narrow specializations.

Together, these guiding principles help create a different institutional DNA from legacy academic programs, ensuring that as the school(s) grow and evolve, they stay true to this different way of teaching city builders.

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How We Start?

The prospect of launching a brand new college is daunting. Substantial time and resources will be required to obtain facilities, recruit faculty, and develop the curriculum before the first student comes through the doors, let alone see the first class through to graduation and obtain any needed accreditation.

Fortunately, there are ways that we can start short of building a full college from day one. We don’t need to know all the steps along the way. We just have to start.

The following ideas benefit from the fact that they require much less time and fewer resources to launch. There is an existing market of people who will pay for these programs. And no accreditation is required.

• Weekend intensives—Perhaps the easiest step. A weekend is a condensed period of time easier for working adults or full-time students. It can serve as a teaser introduction or to impart a specific idea, skill, or open a door to future programming. Examples of this are already being run by the Incremental Development Alliance (IncDev), Neighborhood Evolution, Small Scale Developer Forum, and formerly by the City Building Exchange. The new Citymakers Collective is planning a course for the fall of 2024 on cognitive architecture.

• Summer schools—Significantly more intensive (especially logistically to secure housing and classroom space). College students and recent graduates already pay for summer programs that offer unique learning experiences (no course credit necessarily required). A three, four, or five week summer program offers much more space for an extensive curriculum and lasting skill development. The Citymakers Collective is working on such a course for the summer of 2025, modeled on the Intbau summer programs. I have a summer course of my own in development, the City Summer Intensive.

• Professional certifications—Another option is to create a series of (online) courses that would lead to a professional certification. Examples include CNU-Accreditation and a new initiative by IncDev to certify consultants for working with incremental developers.

• Online courses—Online courses are attractive for their lower overhead, ability to scale enrollment, and ability to reach students anywhere. Examples run the gamut from short programs like the many commercial real estate development training programs such as Thesis Driven or Bright Build to multi-year courses like the Classic Planning Institute’s Academy.

In developing these programs, we will begin creating the curriculum materials, pedagogical tools, network of instructors, professional staff, and market knowledge we need to build lasting institutions. It’s proof of concept–for ourselves and for others (especially funders).

Looking Backward in the Future

If we can project forward to 2050 and imagine looking backward, what do we hope to see?

I imagine a rich ecosystem of educational programs–from short courses to graduate certificates and undergraduate programs. I see a network of City & Town Builder Colleges spread across the country, offering graduate and undergraduate degrees, sharing similar DNA and core curricula, and also specializing to meet the needs of their region. I imagine a constellation of satellite campuses in Europe, Africa, Asia, and Latin America, shared by the colleges in the network for international learning experiences.

All together, these institutions are training thousands of new professionals each year, as well as pulling legacy institutions along to keep up.

Ten thousand or more alumni of our various programs will spread out across the country, taking important roles building and managing cities and towns across every state. New leaders within the professions and their trade organizations will reorient their professions around the common enterprise of “building places people love.”

Instead of disposable places and people, we will build and administer cities and towns to last 1,000 years–sustainable, resilient, prosperous, adaptive, inclusive, beloved communities.

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PS–If you or someone you know is in a position to donate substantial resources to this effort, please reach out!

Note: Around the College Town is my weekly links roundup article on urbanism and education. These posts mostly cover news that may have fallen through the cracks rather than the big events.

Billionaires Revitalized Dead Colleges

This week it was announced that Jensen Huang, the Nvidia billionaire, and his wife, Lori, donated a $75 million gift to Vanderbilt University. The gift will not be going to the traditional campus in Nashville, Tennessee. Instead, this will go to fund Vanderbilt’s new art, architecture, and design campus in San Francisco, California.

The site where the new Jen-Hsun and Lori Huang College of Art, Architecture and Design will be located is on the former campus of California College of the Arts (CAA), which is shuttering at the end of this upcoming academic year. The 119-year-old arts college struggled with enrollment and had a $20 million deficit. Vanderbilt agreed to buy CAA for an undisclosed amount earlier this year.

Importantly, this purchase is not a merger, nor even an acquisition. The institution formerly known as CCA will cease to exist. Vanderbilt has promised to keep some of the spirit alive by creating the “CCA Institute” and by keeping the Wattis Institute gallery open.

The CAA case is a wonderful location, easily walkable and bikeable in the booming city of San Francisco. Unlike some dying colleges, a lot of the campus space seemed like it was in good shape and recently refurbished. There is no doubt in my mind that with Huang and Vanderbilt leading the revitalizing, the campus will be a thriving jewel for the city and university.

Something Old or New?

Wealthy donors bequeathing colleges large sums of money is nothing new. These kinds of philanthropic efforts go back to the origins of higher education in the country with the likes of Elihu Yale and John Harvard. Vanderbilt is no exception, as Cornelius Vanderbilt, the railroad and transportation robber baron, made the initial donation to get the school up and running.

But perhaps a new emerging trend is not for upstart universities founded by billionaires, but instead revitalizing dead or dying college spaces. The most recent cases are alliances between the billionaires and strong universities. The Huang-Vanderbilt case is just the most recent. There have been others.

Steve and Connie Ballmer gave the University of Oregon $425 million, which helped to create and fund the Ballmer Institute for Children’s Behavioral Health at a new campus in Portland. The University of Oregon-Portland sits on the site of the former Concordia University, which shut down in 2020 after over a century of operations. I visited the new Portland campus, and it is one of the finest adaptive reuses of a defunct college that I have ever seen. Oregon invested some serious funding into the space, and it shows.

In another similar case, Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of famed Apple founder Steve Jobs, funded a nonprofit that bought out the old San Francisco Art Institute. Rather than partnering with an established university, this new space will be called California Academy of Studio Arts (CASA), including saving the beloved local artist Diego Rivera's mural. It was in rough shape when I saw it last year, but I trust that Jobs will have the resources to revitalize the space.

Billionaires Can’t (or Won’t) Always Save Dying Colleges

Looking at this new trend, it brings up the question about billionaires possibly saving struggling colleges before they die. While this tactic has been tried, they do not always work. The Huang family had even formerly donated to CAA, reportedly up to $22.5 million. The gift was lauded as saving the college back when it was made in 2025. But in the end, the college still closed.

Hampshire College is perhaps one of the most famous institutions to shutter. The documentarian Ken Burns helped contribute to the fund that raised $55 million with hopes of saving his alma mater. Despite the efforts, the college announced its closure in 2026.

In a lesser-known case, Masayoshi Son, the billionaire Softbank founder, attended Holy Names College as an international ESL student before transferring to UC Berkeley. He even met his wife there! But he did not save the Bay Area college when it finally went under in 2023. He did donate to the Schwarzman Scholars Program at Tsinghua University, the powerhouse Chinese university.

Finally, I turn to Andrew Cherng and Peggy Cherng, the founders of Panda Express. Long before their Chinese chain restaurant empire, they were international students at tiny Baker University in Baldwin City, Kansas. While the college is still open, it has struggled in recent years. I always wondered why the Cherngs wouldn’t plop down a bunch of money at their alma mater, perhaps renaming it Cherng University. But they have only donated $50,000, as far as I can tell.

Instead, the couple and their philanthropic arms have focused on giving to stronger institutions. They gave the California Institute of Technology $30 million in 2017, the University of Missouri $5 million in 2024 (which is the master’s alma mater of the couple), Cal Poly Pomona $2.5 million in 2011, and even $450,000 to the University of Pennsylvania for the Panda Express Postdoctoral Fellowship in Asian American Studies.

Strong Get Stronger

I think the appeal for these billionaires in reviving a dead campus is to start something new. But by going through an already-established university, it gives more cachet and increases the chances of success. After all, a lot of namesake university patrons never lived to see their creations reach great heights. Leland Stanford Junior University wouldn’t become the Stanford we know today until the tech booms in Silicon Valley.

These revitalizing efforts have largely centered on campuses in or around major metropolitan areas. While this trend may give hope to communities with dead colleges, I think that spaces in rural areas will be a much harder sell. It takes some serious deep pockets to make these revitalization efforts work. Expect more of this in so-called “Superstar Cities” like New York City, San Francisco, LA, or Miami, not in small towns without the cachet.

These trends are just part of the Age of Conquest in US higher education. The biggest get bigger, the weaker wither away. I also extended to competative nature to broader American society in an adaptive version for The Chronicle, which helps to explain why billionaires prefer to partner with the top institutions. These recent cases probably warrant a deeper investigation into the broader landscape of philanthropy in higher ed and beyond.

Video by me.

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Links I’m Reading This Week

Education

• NYU Tokyo? New York University is discussing the possibility of a new branch campus in Japan. My guess is that this does not happen, but rather a smaller study center. It will cannibalize too much of the NYC Shanghai appeal.

• In other New York news, a New York state school district is getting a robot teacher. I do not foresee these replacing us anytime soon, but it is an interesting development nonetheless, especially with the dueling forces of defunding and anti-Ed Tech sentiments.

• BU agrees to give the city of Boston over $100 million. Non-profit universities do not pay taxes, so sometimes they are seen to leach off of public service. These kinds of deals are becoming more common.

• Over in education housing news, Santa Cruz cannot retain teachers due to housing prices. It is a common problem in high-cost-of-living California. Some districts have even opted to build teacher housing. I wish we would just build more generally.

• In higher ed housing news, A two billion dollar student housing development is coming to the University of Florida.

• Columbia University buys beautiful gothic dorms. Funny enough, the building was formerly Union Theological Seminary, which is a Columbia affiliate.

• Loyola Chicago may turn a shuttered Catholic school into housing. These types of adaptive reuse cases are rising as more schools shutter.

• Even regular people are getting into the adaptive reuse in this space. Live in an old boarding school or shuttered school. Both are quite reasonably priced.

• On the other end of the spectrum, if you have 17 million sitting around, you can buy Thomas Jefferson’s childhood home. I would love to see it turned into some kind of living museum or educational center.

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Urbanism-ish

• LA might finally rid itself of the graffiti towers. It’s embarrassing that the locality has allowed it to languish this long. Poor governance.

• LA Mayor wants transit system to be free. I am already on record as anti-free buses. A more efficient and frequent system is a much higher priority. LA does not have this.

• We don’t have to accept a poorly run Los Angeles. LA is trying to build more bus stop shades to prepare for the Olympics. I’m glad we are getting these, but it’s kind of sad that it takes hosting a global event to make it happen.

• One local writer makes the case that a denser LA doesn’t have to be an ugly one. Hear, hear!

• Finally for the LA news, if you are so sick of the city, then how about hitting rural California? Gold mining is becoming hot again in the state.

• Switching gears from my current home to my former home, OKC might get a commuter rail system. The renderings look great. This would be a huge boon to the area.

• In self-driving car news, trial lawyers are against self-driving cars because they make so much money from car accidents. Disgusting.

• Likewise, Uber is trying to slow down the adoption of self-driving cars. I guess they are falling behind the race between Waymo and other industry leaders, so they are looking to slow down progress.

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Closing Time… Sweep Your Own Bike Lane

Guerrilla urbanism (or tactical urbanism) is when people take over duties from localities to fix streets, roads, and other public infrastructure. Sometimes, these acts can get people arrested. Nonetheless, the dereliction of governments leads people to become vigilantes with efforts to clean up bad urbanism.

I recently found a new company selling do-it-yourself bike lane sweepers, aptly called Bike Lane Sweeper. These can easily be hooked up to a bike and then driven over a bike lane, removing various debris from the path. The costs range from $3,100 to $5,500, including a hybrid upgrade. The company targets bike and urbanist advocacy groups who take on this guerrilla urbanism. But they also hope that municipalities will take interest, too.

The BikeLA subreddit cued me onto this new company. A local outfit called Bikerowave Coop has a Bike Lane Sweeper in its arsenal, clearing out streets on Venice, from Lincoln to Sepulveda, major bike thoroughfares. The poster even offered a review of the product in the comment section, and organized by me below.

Pros:

1. “There is no competition, there’s literally nothing else I can do… for this size and weight.”

2. “It’s actually kind of fun to use, and he gets a ton of people engaged and happy that somebody’s doing something about the problem.”

3. “It can be towed behind, literally any bike, as long as you keep it under 10 mph.”

4. “…taking up minimal space.”

Cons:

• “A new one is pretty damn expensive.”

• “You can’t pick up bigger objects like a fast food container cup, or other larger objects that can’t fit under the front of the unit.”

• “It can’t handle several inch deep debris in one pass, you’ll have to come back and do a couple passes on the deep stuff”.

• “It kicks up quite a lot of dust.”

• “It’s not good at catching every single thing on the very edge of the curb.”

So what do you think? Is the Bike Lane Sweeper the answer to much-neglected bike lanes in the country? I definitely would like to see more of these operated in my area. Universities, too, could have a few of these to clean up parts of campus.

Editorial Note: This is the second guest post in the “Summer School at College Towns” series.

This guest post comes from , is an Orange County educator whose experience has focused on combining her teaching of English as a Second Language background with other academic studies, including public policy and higher education research.

College Towns has previously posted about international students being targeted by the Trump administration. Building from these and the recent policy to limit visas to just four years, Carson explores how losing international students is detrimental to local economies. Enjoy. -Ryan

International students have quietly shored up the budgets not only for the schools they attend but also for the municipalities in which they reside. As an instructor at multiple institutions in Southern California, I wondered if the absence of international students was causing any measurable issues for local economies. I did what all academics do when faced with a research question; I began searching for data. What I found is that a quiet economic siphon is deeply impacting the neighborhoods surrounding local universities.

NAFSA’s most recent economic report from 2025 tells us that international students contributed $42.89 billion to the national economy in 2024-2025. This figure reflects the loss of $1.1 billion over the prior year. Federal laws restricting visas for international students have become increasingly stringent and show no sign of letting up under the present administration. Table 1 below shows how those numbers have changed over time.

Readers will be familiar with the litany of complaints levied against international students. Claims range from: international students take seats from Americans, international students are spies, international students steal American jobs. This framing of international students as bad actors is offered without context or proof. Such statements are designed to destabilize higher ed at a time when the system is already under attack and being forced to adapt to regulatory interference. The recent ruling from the Trump administration limiting visas to only four years has only added to these unwarranted attacks on this student population.

How Does This Economic Hit Land at the Local Level?

Anecdotally, I know from the institutions I teach for that it hurts programs, and the decrease in students has resulted in fewer classes being offered. Some might view this as a problem solely for higher ed to sort out, but research reveals that international students contribute dollars not only to tuition but also to home rentals, food, commerce, car purchases, tourist dollars, and sales tax.

To even secure an F-1 student visa, these applicants must demonstrate absolute financial solvency by providing liquid bank statements proving they can cover a minimum cost of attendance that typically ranges from $40,000 to over $75,000 per year, depending on the campus and degree program. Because they are legally barred from working off-campus, this entire sum represents a guaranteed, upfront injection of outside capital directly into the neighborhoods surrounding our universities.

Losing international students isn’t just an issue of empty seats in a classroom. Student reduction means empty apartments, fewer customers at neighborhood grocery stores, and fewer dollars flowing into local sales taxes that fund city parks and roads. The impact is much larger than is currently being portrayed.

While multiple examples exist of this local economic impact, I selected two cases from my state of California to demonstrate the order of importance this issue presents to local communities. California provides a microcosm of the entire country, as illustrated in Table 1. I selected public institutions for ease of finding verifiable information, but this does not mean that private institutions are not impacted in the same way.

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Foul Weather in San Diego

The economic liabilities of tightening immigration policies are acutely evident at San Diego State University (SDSU), a major public institution facing unexpected international enrollment contractions. While SDSU administrators initially projected an expansion of international enrollment based on strong admission activity, thousands of accepted students were ultimately unable to enroll due to severe visa appointment backlogs and a national F-1 visa refusal rate that spiked to a decade-high of 35%.

This administrative gridlock has been severely compounded by an aggressive federal vetting climate. Formal updates from the SDSU International Student Center document instances of sudden visa status terminations and active student visas being revoked mid-semester without warning.

When a major metropolitan campus like SDSU loses substantial international enrollment to systemic visa denials, the fiscal damage spills immediately into the surrounding San Diego municipality. According to NAFSA, every three international students historically support a local service job; a contraction of 400 international students at a major hub like SDSU places roughly 133 local San Diego service, hospitality, and retail jobs at immediate risk or eliminates them entirely.

The economic ripple effect of losing international enrollment can be painful. Based on the latest economic value analysis by NAFSA, international students in California contribute an average of nearly $45,000 each to the economy through a combination of tuition, housing, and local commerce. Applying this baseline to SDSU, losing a cohort of just 400 international students represents a combined loss of roughly $18 million in direct campus revenue and local San Diego business spending, which doesn’t even account for the parallel losses hitting neighboring universities.

In case you are thinking that SDSU can just replace these international students with domestic students and avoid the problem entirely, the issue is more complex. According to data compiled by the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC), non-resident undergraduate students pay significantly more than California residents. At California State Universities (including SDSU), non-residents pay the base tuition plus an additional supplemental tuition fee, bringing their total to roughly double what an in-state resident pays. The same is true for graduate students, except that international students make up more of the student population, especially in STEM programs.

The extra tuition from international and out-of-state students directly helps offset state revenue shortfalls and heavily subsidizes the education, financial aid, and resources available to local California residents.

If any California State University campus reduces its international student body and replaces them with in-state students, the university brings in far less revenue. This forces the campus to look for budget cuts, which can mean fewer course offerings, larger class sizes, or fewer campus jobs—all of which harm the local campus economy. This is in addition to the problems faced in the local off-campus economic community.

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(Un)Welcome to the OC

These shifting dynamics of federal visa approvals and immigration backlogs have left a clear mark on California’s public university infrastructure, with California State University, Fullerton (CSUF) serving as a primary regional indicator in Orange County. For years, CSUF operated as a major cultural and economic hub for international students, maintaining a historical baseline of well over 2,400 to 3,100 foreign-born students annually, according to historical records reported in College Factual institutional tracking data. However, as federal screening measures tightened and visa backlogs mounted, recent aggregate profiles indicate that CSUF’s unique international footprint has contracted significantly, sliding to a baseline of roughly 1,500 to 1,790 active students.

This almost 50% downturn mirrors a wider macro trend given that the California State University (CSU) system has experienced a stark contraction in its global student body, culminating in a recent drop to just 12,122 international students, as reported by CalMatters. The downturn represents the tail end of a multi-year decline accelerated by the pandemic. In 2019, the system boasted a robust international enrollment hovering between 18,000 and 20,000 students. However, a perfect storm of pandemic-era travel restrictions, prolonged visa backlogs, and fluctuating federal immigration policies ultimately drained more than 5,800 international students from the system, deeply reshaping the cultural and financial landscape of California’s state campuses.

Applying economic framework formulas established by NAFSA, a contraction of this magnitude at CSUF means that an estimated $30 million to $45 million in annual, non-tuition discretionary spending has vanished from the local Fullerton and Orange County ecosystem. Based on NAFSA’s regional employment multiplier, erasing up to 1,600 international scholars from the local economy places roughly 533 local hospitality, retail, and off-campus housing jobs at immediate risk. Furthermore, this contraction simultaneously starves the public university of approximately $24 million in annual out-of-state tuition premiums traditionally used to subsidize campus operations and domestic enrollment.

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How Long Will We Continue to Shoot Ourselves in the Foot?

The international visa crisis is not a temporary administrative headache; it is an unintended, self-inflicted economic sanction on America and our college towns. While university press releases may project a stable front, local landlords, small business owners, and service workers are quietly paying the multi-million-dollar price for federal policy gridlock. National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP) data shows that 59% of America’s billion-dollar “unicorn” startups have immigrant founders, and one in four began as an international student visa holder. Blocking international student participation harms local metropolitan ecosystems.

In addition to the economic woes inflicted by the visa restrictions, there are multiple other unintended consequences of limiting the number of international students in both undergraduate and graduate programs. As an instructor, I truly value the international perspective these students bring to the classroom. Their contributions offer the domestic students an opportunity to hear perspectives other than their own and offer a chance to form friendships and learn about other cultures, even if they are not able or interested in participating in study abroad situations. It is not possible or practical for every student to leave their home campus, and for some, this is as close as they will get to an international experience.

Another issue is the loss of potential employees with the skills many employers report as difficult to find, including science and math expertise and/or multilingual employees capable of working fluently in more than one language. The Peterson Institute for International Economics recently produced a report that details the impact of international student exclusion on U.S. economic growth.

The US is not alone in this movement. England, Australia, and Canada have all also attempted to reduce the number of international students. However, they are also discovering that shutting out all international students may not be the best way forward. If you follow the money, the true economic beneficiaries of America’s hostile visa climate are America’s geopolitical competitors, including China, whose “internationalization at home” strategy successfully retains billions in domestic family capital that used to be liquidated into U.S. college towns.

Overall, research led me to more clearly link the loss of students to a reduction of both city revenues and jobs. This important issue demands additional research and consideration. The interest groups lobbying Congress for a remedy are doing so from the standpoint of the institutions themselves, but clearly there needs to be input from local, state, and federal government officials to highlight the economic imperative revealed in the research.

Note: Around the College Town is my weekly links roundup article on urbanism and education. These posts mostly cover news that may have fallen through the cracks rather than the big events.

Free Buses vs. Fast Buses

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has received some heat recently after a hot streak of hosting the World Cup and winning the NBA finals. One story saw him critiqued for leaving out Little Italy from a map of immigrant enclave communities around the city (to which I don’t have much to add until my future The Sopranos article). The other story was about buses, sparking a debate between free buses and faster buses.

One headline in a local paper read, “Mamdani’s push for free buses takes a back seat to faster ones.” Mamdani’s critics say he is breaking a promise to voters for free bases, a central platform during his mayoral campaign. Instead, the mayor of NYC is teaming up with the governor of NY to offer the city faster buses. The plan is to invest millions into dedicated, protected bus lanes, new bus stops, shelters and seating, Automated Camera Enforcement (ACE) to keep out illegally parked cars, and other maintenance. These services will be “modeled after the best rapid bus systems around the world,” according to the report from the mayor’s office.

I’m not mad at the mayor for chasing fast over free. I’ve already come out as being against free buses. As I wrote before, I take my cue from the East Asian countries where I used to live, South Korea and China, or have visited, Japan and Hong Kong. These places have wonderful public transit (see my video below); none of the systems are free. They are low-cost and reliable. American cities should aspire to their level of service. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel.

The juxtaposition between Asia and the US is even starker right when you return home from the former. I have written about doing just that here in LA, but I also experienced a version of it when I moved back from Korea to New York City for grad school.

At that time, I was working as an adjunct at a college north of the city in White Plains. I would take the Metro-North train for an easy ride up. It was nice; the biggest hassle was getting to the station. I had to get from Columbia to the Metro-North Station, going down 125th Street. That stretch was incredibly packed. The bus would often take 45 minutes or more just to creep along that mile. Illegally parked cars, normal traffic, the inefficient system for wheelchairs, the stops too close together—all things that equaled big delays. It was actually just faster to walk, so that’s what I ended up doing most of the time. This is a system failure.

To the city’s credit, they installed dedicated bus lanes and raised stations on 125th, along with a real BRT line that didn’t stop as much. My old trip takes a fraction of the time now. But some of the same problems I faced when I lived there persist in the rest of the city. “Forever. Slowest bus in America,” one local resident told Streetsblog New York City. He typically waited a half hour for his bus, then it crept along Tremont Avenue in the Bronx.

The rest of NYC deserves some reprieve as my old strip got in Harlem. The strategies used to make buses faster on 125th are exactly the right kinds of fixes buses need throughout not just the city but the country. It seems this is exactly what Mayor Mamdani is trying to do—much smarter than free buses.

And yet, people are still mad at the mayor. Probably the dimmest response that I have seen to all of this is the idea that faster, more efficient buses will lead to less overtime for union bus drivers. This is absurd. We can run more buses! Really, we should not be thinking that public transportation is some kind of job program. The top priority should be the actual service.

So I don’t care if Mamdani backtracked on his idea of free buses. Faster and more efficient is the way to go. What do you think? Where do you fall on the free bus vs. faster bus debate? I’m not sure we can ever have both (or am I wrong there?).

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Links I’m Reading This Week

Education

• In a sign of the times of our national greying and birthrate drops, some schools that shuttered due to low enrollment are getting new life as senior housing. Some residents attended the school when they were kids!

• BYU is building more family housing for married students and those with kids. Universities really should be considering these kinds of options more, as the stereotypical 18-year-old college student is no longer the norm.

• San Jose school district is looking to buy an apartment for staff housing. It’s sad that our teachers can barely afford anything in this state.

• Even a place like Abilene, Texas, is facing a “rental crisis.” The university there is now looking to ease off-campus demand with more on-campus offerings.

• Harvard is getting into the layoff game. If even Harvard must shrink its workforce, what hope do the rest of the universities have? Tough times.

• After a University of Oregon student was killed by a driver during a bike ride, Eugene officials look to road diets. The dangerous driver was reportedly doing 50 MPH on a residential street next to campus. It’s sad that local officials need a death to happen before slowing down cars and making cities safer for bikers and pedestrians.

• In some international ed news, India’s top university is set to open a branch campus in New York. The Age of Conquest knows no bounds.

• at New China Literacy chronicles 50 years of Chinese college entrance exam essay questions. Cool idea for research connecting education with politics.

• In more China news, the country has successfully launched and landed a reusable rocket. This will just heat up the space race even further (a good thing!).

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Urbanism-ish

• Poland is planning to build a massive national rail network, including almost 1,700 miles of high-speed rail. It seems like a lot of exciting things are happening in Poland these days.

• India is also getting into the high-speed rail game, with an added seven new corridors recently announced.

• Likewise, the UAE is also getting into the high-speed rail game, along with their very own Sphere. I guess if I want to take a train to the Sphere, I’ll have to fly to the Middle East first, since the LA to Vegas one seems like it is never happening.

• Feeling the success of hosting the World Cup game, LA is confident it can make its Olympics car-free after all. I, though, remain very much not confident!

• has a post on how officials in LA are hindering the rebuilding efforts from last year's fires. Only 28 of the 5000 homes have been rebuilt so far, and the city seems more interested in catching rogue contractors than speeding up the process.

• You can now kayak through the infamous LA concrete river. Another insane and wasted space that is finally coming to some use.

• Here’s a cool real estate opportunity for any readers down in Australia. Live in the bell tower of an old monastery! Less than half a million USD.

• Ok, if you are in the US, I have you covered. Here is a church conversion up for sale in Buffalo, NY. Only $500K (admittedly, not quite as “converted” as the one from Australia).

• Tokyo to add a 3% tax on hotel stays. I was there last summer, and I certainly understand the overtourism issue, especially as the Yen continues to depreciate.

• In self-driving car news, Waymo is expanding to Tampa, Las Vegas, San Diego, and Denver. I am personally excited for the San Diego expansion, which means I am sandwiched between Waymo service in LA and SD, just waiting for it here in OC.

• Of course, humans are trying to find ways to sabotage the self-driving movement: Teens use Waymo to shoot water guns at other cars.

• In other car news, Fiat to bring tiny golf-cart-like car to the US. Not sure about the market for these, but I welcome companies making cars smaller, not bigger, for once.

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Closing Time… Celebrities Wish They Were Professors

This week, fellow faculty in the r/professor subreddit were debating a clip between Mindy Kaling and Amy Poehler. The two comedians were discussing what it would be like to be a professor. Poehler convinces Kaling that it would be a nice life:

I don’t think I want to teach at a college. -Kaling

You don’t know that! Don’t rule that out. -Poehler

Think about coming in, like a beautiful sweater, like Dartmouth, let’s say. Drive in at 10 o’clock in the morning. Have your coffee… the door creaks open and there’s like 150 kids staring at you and you start your class. Nobody gets to interrupt. You’re done in an hour. -Poehler

That does sound good. -Kaling

I’m a big fan of both The Office and Parks & Rec (along with SNL and countless other performances by Poehler). So it was fun to hear them romanticize my profession. The subreddit got a kick out of it, too. Well, some faculty were annoyed (and overly sensitive), but others thought it was a pretty funny perception of the profession by the celebs.

Poehler even answered that last question in the podcast episode, which wasn’t in the clip. She said robots and AI can just take care of the work. Again, there is a good sense of humor about this. Fellow professors, do not take it so seriously! Enjoy it.

Note: Around the College Town is my weekly-ish links roundup article on urbanism and education. These posts mostly cover news that may have fallen through the cracks rather than the big events.

This week falls on the July 4th holiday weekend, so this edition will be a little light.

Yes, Professors Can Be Patriotic?

The stereotype of American professors is that we hate the country. This is certainly the view of my profession within some top conservative circles, with Vice President JD Vance leading the charge. "The professors are the enemy," the Ivy League-trained VP assails.

This line of attack is not even a new one. "Do Colleges HAVE To Hire Red Professors?" asked The American Legion Magazine back in 1951. The issue was published during the days of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) mania, so it may be wrapped up in questionable intentions. Yet, the symmetry from now to then is unmistakable.

As much as I defend US higher education here on College Towns, I must admit that some of these accusations do seem generally correct: many professors are simply not patriotic, at least not in the US. Indeed, reports that a “vast majority” of professors are left-leaning, while finds that pride in the country has collapsed among left-leaning Americans.

This means that they do not celebrate the Fourth of July, they get queasy with the American flag, and they dwell on national negativities. The sentiment can be described as doomerism, and it has become a common ideal among American professors. Today, so many professors want to be Howard Zinn.

But this form of national doomerism is not universal in the profession. There are some professors who are proud of the country, its people, and its history. Of course, I know this firsthand as the author of three installments in my United States Semiquincentennial Series. But I am not alone in the profession either.

Over the holiday weekend, other academics offered their celebrations. , Associate Professor at the University of Notre Dame, proclaimed, “I’m an American nationalist, too. Not just a patriot in the sense of being proud of America, but a nationalist,” on . Likewise, , Fellow at Brown University, labeled the “America is bad” take as “a stone-cold loser” on the . Finally, former classmate of mine and Assistant Professor at Leiden University, , makes “The case for liberal nationalism” through a rich data narrative on his new Substack.

US higher education needs these kinds of pro-national sentiments because these are generally what the everyman American believes. Our sector has recently been looking for answers to why trust from the public has tanked. I won’t pretend to have the full answers to this quandary (it is quite complicated), but I do think making sure that the public knows some of our professors are patriotic can help.

None of this patriotism means there can be no criticism of the country. I provide my fair share of national critique on this very website. I lean on the famous quote from J. William Fulbright, the late Arkansas senator who championed international education. He was also a former professor, derisively called an “egghead” by rivals like Lyndon B. Johnson. Fulbright wrote:

To criticize one's country is to do it a service and pay it a compliment. It is a service because it may spur the country to do better than it is doing; it is a compliment because it evidences a belief that the country can do better than it is doing.

I understand that many are disillusioned with politics in the country right now. That’s fine, but sometimes you just have to take a break from politics, eat a hot dog, grab a Coors, watch some fireworks, and celebrate the holiday with the rest of the country. Happy 250th, America.

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If you haven’t already, check out my Semiquincentennial Series. I should have one more (or possibly two) coming out by the end of the summer. Thanks for reading.

Education

• California will vote on a $350 million bond to build more affordable student housing. My guess is that it fails, as it combines two things the voters hate most: housing and students, not to mention the state’s long tax revolt.

• On the flip side, UT San Antonio and Indiana University are adding more student housing options in their metropolitan downtowns. I am always a fan of this strategy to help juice the atmosphere of downtowns. Students bring life.

• Virginia Wesleyan becomes Batten U. This is not the worst name change that I have seen, but losing the geographic descriptor might not be ideal.

• Across the pond, Chinese companies are closing fancy private schools in the UK, annoying parents and worrying local education officials.

• In educational-adjacent news, I’m somewhat of a book collector, and I am always surprised by how much some rare books are worth. See the fair with $100M in books:

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  Urbanism-ish

• Disneyland is offering twilight rates at just 59 bucks. I might have to try this as a Southern California resident.

• But if you are planning a visit, the LAX People Mover has been delayed… again. At this point, I am wondering if we are going to make the 2028 Olympics. We already missed the World Cup!

• Fodor’s is releasing an AI modeled after the founder. It seems the travel book genre is basically dead; thrift stores cannot give them away. Perhaps AI can save these companies.

• Boise, Idaho, might be getting an intercity passenger train. Cool for the region!

• at tells us why infill housing can help save dying cities.

• Over in self-driving car news, Zoox has a new design. Looks a bit too futuristic for my taste.

  

• China’s Xiaomi self-driving car impresses in Germany. I think from EVs to AVs, Chinese car companies are going to dominate the future.

• American-built Japanese cars are worse than Japanese-built, a feature that does not help in the competition with Chinese manufacturers, as the Japanese continue to lose ground.

• Speaking of struggling industries, this over-a-century-old woodworking shop in New York City is shutting down. Sad, but these are the realities these days.

Closing Time… The World Wishes the US a Happy 250th

I loved seeing all the various Semiquincentennial celebrations across the country, but I might have enjoyed the images from throughout the world even more. Yes, other countries paid homage to the country’s 250th birthday. I found this heartening, given that our reputation and standing have taken a hit recently. Here are some of my favorites that I saw on social media (there are many more):

Emmanuel Macron, President of France:

Lin Chia-lung, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Republic of China:

The German Embassy in DC:

The Republic of Kiribati:

The Eiffel Tower in Paris:

And my absolute favorite comes from the celebration in Japan. The Japanese government gifted 250 cherry blossom trees to the US, adding to the gifts that inspired the DC festival going back to 1910. Tokyo also held a fireworks celebration as the Rainbow Bridge lit with American national colors.

Japan wished the US a happy Bicentennial back in the 1970s, too. What an image from that celebration below. Since I work at a university with roots in Japan, I am pleased to see that the two nations have strong relations. Many of my colleagues and students come from Japan. I even celebrated July 4th with a few this year. Yes, I did buy some Sapporo for the BBQ. Don’t worry, we also had hamburgers.

I have to close with the post below, which I had a good chuckle at on July 4th. Thanks to all who celebrated in the US and across the world! Here’s to 250 more.

This article is the third installment of my United States Semiquincentennial Series. This series is a celebration of the country, its history, and the American people. See the previous editions on the Space Race and National Geographic.

This summer is the 250th birthday of the United States of America, officially on July 4, 2026. This Semiquincentennial was supposed to be a monumental celebration of the country, its people, and its accomplishments. Yet, the build-up to the date has felt flat, with the national mood seemingly not feeling like partying together.

The apathy for the Semiquincentennial got me thinking about the national mood during the previous Bicentennial back in 1976. I recently visited the Nixon Presidential Library for a field trip with my students, where there was a temporary exhibition on those celebrations from 50 years ago. The planning for those festivities dated back to the 1960s, with a keen eye on replicating and surpassing the 100th birthday back in 1876.

There was excitement over America’s 200th birthday then. Towns and malls alike across the country were decked out in patriotic red, white, and blue décor. Americans flocked to Disney to see “America on Parade,” a celebration of the celebrations. These parades and parties highlighted communities throughout that summer. Incorporating every state was intentional. In 1969, President Richard Nixon said of the planning:

America is 50 states. America is big cities and small towns... we want this celebration to be national. It must go directly to the people and derive its strength from the people.

Beyond the events, Americans went out to buy a plethora of commemorative trinkets, pins, plates, books, and all manner of products in between. All of this memorabilia was adorned with the iconic Bicentennial logo. The logo even made it onto NASA’s Viking Mars Lander, which landed on Mars in 1976 (some symmetry with the recent Artemis Moon Mission).

All this is to say that Americans in 1976 were ready to celebrate their country. I juxtapose that sentiment with the recent national mood. It seems that Americans of 2026 have not been as interested in partying for our founding. The merchandise is thin, the decorations are sparing, and the planned events have been contrived.

This malaise over the Semiquincentennial held true in the early part of the summer. But things are different as we approach the official date in July. What changed? The World Cup came to town. Specifically, foreign visitors descended upon our country, spreading from sea to shining sea. They have reminded us that we have much to celebrate in the US.

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Viral Images of World Cup Visitors

The foreign visitors’ excitement over what they found in our country has ignited something inside of us Americans. We had been taking for granted the fun things about the places we call home. Even the mundane can be moving. The politics can be ignored (at least for a couple of weeks). The divides can be bridged. This is all that is happening during the World Cup.

Media outlets have already been chronicling these adventures. Owen Tucker-Smith and Chelsey Dulaney wrote in The Wall Street Journal:

Along the way, he—and other European fans who flocked to Kansas City for the World Cup—beheld the fruits of the American economy from a vantage point few foreign tourists typically see: suburban superstores, hulking plates of food, quiet streets. He marveled at the sprawling houses, a contrast from the tightly packed homes of the Netherlands.

The most emblematic fan has been Freddy, a German tourist who goes by the handle @FreddyLA7 on X. He has been documenting his entire trip across the country on the social media platform. Americans have responded by cheering him on along the way. His excitement for the things that he is experiencing has been infectious.

“The vibes are insane. Driving through the great state of Louisiana on our way to New Orleans. It’s crazy how diverse this country is, every day the scenery looks different,” he wrote, as he was trekking through the Gulf Coast. He has been compared to a modern-day Alexis de Tocqueville. The average culture and everyday life of America today necessitate visits to chain restaurants while riding in an SUV. Freddy was even reportedly offered a private jet ride at one point, but he rejected it because “we really want to drive to see a little bit more of Texas and also Oklahoma.”

I love that many of these international visitors have not just stayed in the destination cities like New York City or Los Angeles. There are examples of visitors loving so many different parts of the country, from urban to rural and even suburban. Yes, even suburban, perhaps a surprising admission for an urbanist. But there has certainly been exhilaration for our sprawling strip malls and gargantuan gas stations.

These foreign visitors just embraced being Americans during their World Cup stays. Scenes like Germans trying to square dance or English fans lauding Texan beer and BBQ went viral. Actually, it seemed like every fanbase loved Texas BBQ. “Texas is good! Everything is big!” exclaimed a Japanese fan in Dallas to a local Fox reporter. Others took on a mechanical bull while Americans helped foreign fans order at In-N-Out.

One of the American attractions that has drawn some of the most attention is Buc-ee's. The Texas-based gas and (full) service station chain has gained a mythological status in the country. Even for an American myself, I was left awed after my first trip to a Buc-ee’s. So it is no wonder that foreigners have taken to this national treasure.

The Southern breakfast diner chain Waffle House has also attracted the attention of our guests. The Waffle House franchise also has a cult following. It is not just drunken breakfast food and fist fights at two in the morning (although that is part of it). These restaurants are cultural and civic institutions. They even provide real-world indicators for natural disasters and emergencies through the so-called Waffle House Index. According to the restaurant’s website:

Green means the restaurant is serving a full menu, a signal that damage in an area is limited and the lights are on. Yellow means a limited menu, indicating power from a generator, at best, and low food supplies. Red means the restaurant is closed, a sign of severe damage in the area or unsafe conditions.

We have taken Waffle Houses for granted as Americans, even as they fill our bellies and help to save lives. Foreigners came along and reminded us that these places are worth celebration, not ridicule.

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Embracing National Stereotypes

I should note that the United States is not even the only host for this World Cup. It is a joint bid by North America—the US, Canada, and Mexico. Similar joys we are seeing here are spreading to our co-host neighbors with their own visitors. While the fans have embraced stereotypical North American experiences like big trucks and gas stations, they have also brought with them their own national stereotypes. Fandoms actually embrace what we Americans might think of as insensitive cultural stereotypes.

There were photos of Japanese fans dressed as the cast from Mario video games, others held Pokémon in a crowd while being tossed in the air, and brought trash bags to clean up the stadium after their match. Scottish fans were marching around town donning kilts while playing the bagpipes and belting out I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles) by fellow countryman 80s band the Proclaimers at Fenway Stadium in Boston. Egyptians dressed as pharaohs, Jordanians making camel jokes, and Norwegians embracing the Viking Row are just a few of the highlights from this kind of fun.

Of course, there were some missteps, like a Mexican fan making a squinting gesture at a Korean fan. But these seemed mostly isolated, and the majority of the viral interactions were cheerful. Mexican fans blasted Psy’s Gangnam Style and danced with Korean visitors who were wearing sombreros and fake mustaches. It was pure joy and jubilation for different cultures, even if sometimes perceived as insensitive stereotypes.

The confluence of the World Cup and the NBA Finals really highlighted the magic in the country right now. Brazilian fans were in town for their match at the exact same time as Knicks fans flooded the street to celebrate their first championship in 53 years. The scene was legendary, like so many others across the US, Canada, and Mexico.

I recognize that some of these posts are just pandering, especially considering the X payout system incentivizes engagement. One user proclaimed, “I just had an out of body experience,” with an accompanying photo of Golden Corral. I used to work at Golden Corral, one of my first jobs during high school. It was gross. Perhaps it’s gotten better in recent years, but I actually think this person is likely just pandering to Americans for clicks.

Pete Wells, the prickly restaurant critic for The New York Times, called out this pandering. “But some writers trawling for these stories cast a wide net, and not everything they haul in passes the smell test,” he wrote. Apparently, he found that some of the viral posts were fabrications.

No matter if every post is real, there is certainly a large group of fans here enjoying what the country has to offer. Freddy’s journey is real, all the beer Scottish fans drank was real, and the jubilation was real. Whether or not some posts were fake, this cultural mixing has made the celebration of the 250th birthday real, too.

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World Cup in College Towns, USA

One of my favorite things about this World Cup has been that some teams and fanbases got to experience the classic American college town. Jessica Blake of Inside Higher Ed has a masterful rundown of all the college connections in this World Cup. It is worth a read. Here is the list of host campuses and national teams:

• Bentley University - France

• Bryant University - Ghana

• Florida Atlantic University - Curaçao

• Gonzaga University - Egypt

• Rutgers University - Senegal

• San José State University - Paraguay

• Stockton University - Haiti

• University of California, Santa Barbara - Austria

• University of Kansas - Algeria

• University of North Carolina, Greensboro - Norway

• University of San Diego - New Zealand

• Wake Forest - Germany

• Westmont College - Qatar

Visitors of these countries got to see that good college towns are some of the best places that America has to offer. “The campus is absolutely amazing. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a school like this. I felt like in Hogwarts, like Harry Potter. It is absolutely beautiful,” said Eugenia Károlyi of Telemundo-Spain about her time in Chattanooga, Tennessee.1

These towns have embraced the visitors, too. “Rock Chalk, Algeria!” exclaimed a local in Lawrence, decked out in the North African country’s gear, a play on the university’s call. Another local admitted that he didn’t know much about Algeria, other than where it is on a map, but he was pulling for the team because they took a chance on his beloved town. Some local young boys spoke eloquently about the meaning of the World Cup and that a team was staying in Lawrence. Algeria fans appreciated the hospitality:

The Yimbyland account summed up my feelings: “The best move we’ve made hosting the World Cup so far is sending a bunch of Europeans to the true gems of the American experience: College Towns.” Indeed, American college towns are special places. I’m glad the rest of the world got to see that during this World Cup.

Where Did the Players Go to College?

Not too many of the players on these teams would have had a chance to visit college towns. College athletics is mostly an American tradition. The rest of the world, especially in soccer, utilizes an academy system. They start playing professionally quite young, and college attendance just does not factor into these journeys through elite soccer.

But I was still curious if some players on the teams had any college-going experience. I was pleasantly surprised to have found a few, and it wasn’t just the Americans. Below is a list of players that I found with college-going experience from all of the World Cup teams, a College Towns exclusive.2

I was also intrigued that not just American players or institutions could be found. Certainly, the list is dominated by American institutions, but not all for Americans. There is considerable international student representation on various World Cup teams from Haiti, New Zealand, Canada, and Sweden. Likewise, there are local college sports traditions in Canada, South Korea, and Japan.

I have experience with the college sports culture in South Korea, having graduated from Yonsei University in Seoul with an MA. While I cannot say it is the exact same as American college life, the atmosphere of games can still be intense and high-level. Every year, Yonsei and Korea University (also represented in the World Cup data), compete in Yeongojeon (Yonei-Korean Games). No doubt that the collegiate competition tradition here traces its roots back to US influence. My alma mater, Yonsei, was founded by American missionaries.

The American universities are a fun list, too. They include some traditional college sports powerhouses like the University of Connecticut, along with some familiar Power Five schools, like the University of Maryland, the University of North Carolina, and the University of Washington, all large R1 state flagship institutions. But there are other lesser-known universities on the list, such as Fairfield University and Saint Louis University, or even secondary state institutions like the University of Akron (MACtion represented!) and UNC Wilmington. There is even a community college, with Canada’s Moise Bombito attending Iowa Western Community College before transferring to the University of New Hampshire.

Overall, the colleges that are most represented were Syracuse University, St. John’s University (New York), University of Maryland, University of Virginia, Korea University, and Meiji University. All of these have two players representing their various countries on a World Cup team. In terms of country rank, the US had 31, South Korea had six, Japan had four, and Canada had two. Please don’t use these in some cockamamie university ranking!

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The Nixon Allegory: 1976 to 2026

A controversial president in a deeply divided society, amid raucous protests, runaway inflation, and costly adventurism abroad. This description could be about either the 2020s or the 1970s. The Nixon era is actually a good parallel to the country today. Vietnam was a disaster, Nixon was impeached, and President Gerald Ford wasn’t even elected to VP.

Despite these issues, Americans in 1976 still celebrated the country. “Rarely in the history of the world had so many people turned out so spontaneously to express the love they felt for their country... We had regained our pride,” reflected President Ford on the Bicentennial events.

The Nixon era eventually gave way to the Reagan era. Say what you want about Reagan’s policies, his aesthetics were captivating. They were patriotic, even if not an over-the-top stereotype version. But as we are seeing with this World Cup, there is something fun about over-the-top patriotism.

Some of those same sentiments may have been tried with Trump’s UFC Freedom 250 event or the Great American State Fair, yet they have been viewed as divisive or contrived. These events were truly divisive, as rival groups planned celebrations; one called Freedom 250 and the other America 250. Despite some sensational imagery from the UFC event, the negativity deflated the festivities. Likewise, the Fair has reportedly been poorly attended, and people are mostly making fun of it online, saying it looks like we ordered it from Temu.

Luckily, we do not need to rely on these contrived events for the 250th celebration. We have the World Cup. Ironically, it took the sport that the US has traditionally neglected, especially compared to pretty much every other country in the world. Yet, it was exactly this soccer event that has juiced the American celebration from big cities to rural areas, college towns, and even the suburbs.

I hope this World Cup can show that the US is an open place for foreigners, tourists, and travelers again. Our image has taken a major hit abroad in recent years. Without the World Cup, without the visiting fans, without the pageantry, without the cultural mixes, without the passion, this 250th birthday would have just come and gone with little notice. Instead, it reminded us Americans why we should be celebrating. I am grateful for those foreign World Cup visitors who made this American Semiquincentennial special.

Note: Around the College Town is my weekly-ish links roundup article on urbanism and education. These posts mostly cover news that may have fallen through the cracks rather than the big events.

I’m also on a road trip this week, so this one might be a little light. Enjoy!

New York Haters Keep Losing

Just 6 years ago, an op-ed declared that New York City was “dead forever.” It was the height of COVID, with the city witnessing an unprecedented exodus. Those predictions of doom were wrong then; the city bounced back from the pandemic. With the New York Knicks winning the NBA Finals, those predictions look even more wrong today.

Last year at this time, I was celebrating my hometown basketball team, the Oklahoma City Thunder, winning the NBA Finals. It meant a lot to the city. This year, it was New York City’s turn, a turn they’ve waited 53 years to come up again.

As much as the win meant for OKC last year, those feelings were multiplied by millions more people for the biggest city in the country. I was happy for them. I lived in New York City for 6 years, and have a lot of fond memories even with the Knicks. I was in the Garden for the game where Melo set the record with 62 points!

I love NYC, my former home during graduate school. I think it’s the only world-class city in the country (I’ll have a full article for this take in the future). The density, public transport, and scale are just only comparable to places like Paris, London, or Seoul (sorry to my current home, LA). Perhaps this is why it gets so much hate. It’s the one American city that feels like a foreign city. But it’s not; it’s an American city. We should be proud that it exists.

For all of this, I always defend New York City. Sure, it has its problems, but the depiction and reputation it has from certain right-wing and suburban circles is over the top. They perceive the city as dangerous and chaotic. It’s not. It’s energetic yet safe.

The images out of the Knicks championship run just proved this again. Spontaneous watch parties, projectors on the side of buildings, people watching from fire escapes. People of all different races and ethnicities dancing together, celebrating one thing: the Knicks.

The parade and celebration day showed that energy out in full force. Apparently, two million people poured into the parade route. Yes, there were some issues, like crowds being stuck in the subway or empty busses burnt. To the credit of the city, it all got cleaned up by the next morning.

Things don’t have to be perfect to be beautiful. And the parade was just that. So too was Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s speech. He honored the team and weaved it into the city’s history. It turns out his election has not brought about the apocalypse of the city. Instead, New York City now seems to be entering another Golden Age. Add in the World Cup with the Knicks championship, and vibes are at an all-time high.

The NYC naysayers just keep losing. The city showed us all that this past week. New York City is alive forever. Congrats to them.

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Links I’m Reading This Week

Education

• Community around Stanford pushes the university to build more affordable housing. Ironically, this is the same crowd who fights against normal housing.

• Walmart family announces new STEM university in Bentonville, Arkansas. I wish they would have gone a little more traditional with the design. Nonetheless, it is an interesting development to keep an eye on.

• Hilton Hotels is getting on the college town economy. The power of the top American college towns is still strong.

• California schools are facing stiff declines in student enrollment numbers. NIMBYs in the state have driven out so many young families.

• In some college town news, Berkeley plans to add a parking fee on households with multiple cars. This is going to drive some people absolutely bonkers.

• A landlord in quintessential college towns whines over competition from new purpose-built student accommodation (PBSA). Opposition to more student housing is often championed by people with a vested interest in keeping prices high.

Urbanism-ish

• Economist whines about McDonald’s installing self-service kiosks and cutting staff. He pegs it on minimum wage, but the company has followed the same trend in China for over a decade now. McDonald’s chases the bottom line regardless of minimum wage.

• Now, we cannot just cut all humans yet. Starbucks in Korea closes all stores for a day due to a boneheaded AI consultant suggestion.

• In more workforce news, Japan is turning to foreigners as bus drivers. It will be interesting to see if there is an immigration backlash like here in the US.

• New conspiracy theory: China is funding data center hate in the US. I don’t buy it. The dislike for data centers tracks with our national NIMBY attitude.

• The “hard tech” companies distributed around Southern California are impressive. The engine of the economy is not just in Silicon Valley.

• Of course, the East Coast Bizarro version of California, Florida, has its own impressive new coast name: The Space Coast.

• Switching over to self-driving news, another Waymo crash shows it is again “idiot human driver does something dumb and/ or aggressive, causing a crash with an autonomous vehicle.”

• Waymo will also be welcoming fans to the World Cup. Public transit to our stadiums does not meet international standards, so self-driving cars will be needed.

• Waymo unveils a premium service. I guess this is inevitable, and likely the precursor to the coming subscription model.

• Tesla submitted questionable safety data in Europe. I have long worried Musk’s company will sully the name of the self-driving technology.

• We do not need more bad drivers as it is, as a new report on pedestrian deaths shows the crisis isn’t getting better.

• For cyclists, has a great piece on Carbon Upfront on why bicycles should not have stop signs. This drives drivers crazy.

• Fun new Amtrak fast train is coming to the Pacific Northwest. Great name, too: Amtrak Cascades.

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Closing Time… Ethical Uber in Denver

I was in Denver this week, a lovely city by the way, when my Lyft driver tipped us to an intriguing new rideshare company. It’s called Drivers Cooperative – Colorado, and it is owned and operated by the drivers themselves. They receive a majority of the fare, with a smaller percentage going to the parent company, reversing the trends from Uber and Lyft.

We tried it a couple of times; it worked fine. Since it’s new, I think it still needs a critical mass of users and drivers to maximize its potential. But the drivers we talked to said they loved it. The Coop felt like “owning their own business,” they said. It is the ethical Uber!

Funny enough, More Perfect Union just featured the Coop in a video on the service. And our driver was featured as a spokesman. While the service is only around Colorado, they have eyes on expansion. Philadelphia is supposed to be next, according to the driver. I will be rooting for this company and its drivers, with hopes it will reach me down in California soon.

Editorial Note: This is the first guest post in the “Summer School at College Towns” series. If you are interested in writing for College Towns, feel free to reach out to me on Substack or at ryanmallen555@gmail.com.

Today’s guest post comes from Nico Hohman, who runs the Substack. He is also the Executive Director of Operations at Capitol Campus and is working on his Master’s in Urban & Regional Planning at Georgetown University. Enjoy. -Ryan

I wear two hats at Georgetown University. The first is as a staff member. My role as the Executive Director of Operations of the Capitol Campus gives me the opportunity to interact with just about every group on campus, from facilities to housing to student affairs to the provost’s office and everyone in between. My other hat is that of a graduate student. I will complete my master’s in Urban & Regional Planning in the spring of 2027.

It is through this dual-role lens that I discovered something interesting happening with graduate students: they are getting younger. What’s more, today’s graduate students aren’t just younger versions of previous cohorts. They behave differently too.

This discovery first started as a conversation with my colleagues. We were commenting that it looked like this cohort of graduate students appeared younger than previous groups. And as a current graduate student, I noticed the same thing in my classes. Though I’m far from being old (I’m only 37), it definitely felt like I was the old guy in class.

So I did what any good graduate student would do: I did some research. To the library!

Grad Students Really Are Getting Younger

As it turns out, our observations about these graduate students were correct. According to numbers from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), graduate students have been getting younger over the last 25 years. (Note: IPEDS data is a great source because institutions that receive federal funding for students are required to report data back to the federal government.)

Below is a graph showing the total enrollment of all graduate students across the United States since 2003, broken down into age-specific categories.

The topline number is obvious. Total graduate enrollment has grown by over 500,000 students in the last two decades. Lots of factors play into why graduate enrollment has increased, including more universities offering more graduate programs; more 4+1 dual enrollment programs like at the University of South Carolina, the University of Texas, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and many more; as well as economic cycles that favor graduate school enrollment when the economic outlook looks rough.

What is less obvious from the IPEDS data is how that growth is segmented by age. To better capture this growth among the youngest graduate students, I break down that growth by share. Below is a chart showing the share of graduate students over the last 25 years, categorized by three distinct age cohorts: 24-and-under, 25-to-29 year-olds, and those students over 30 years old. The oldest cohort, those 30 and older, has seen a decline in enrollment since the start of the new millennium, while the share of graduate students in the youngest cohort has grown by nearly 50%.

These three age cohorts were selected because it is assumed that the youngest cohort is moving directly from undergraduate to graduate studies. The middle cohort is assumed to have some experience in their originally selected fields and may be looking to obtain different credentials to pursue a different field of study. While this may also be true for the oldest cohort, it is more often assumed they are obtaining additional credentials to advance their current positions in the workforce.

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Introducing the Graduate Youth Index

To better highlight these trends, in the chart below I introduce the Graduate Youth Index. This index tracks the growth (or contraction) of these three specific age cohorts against their respective baseline shares in 2003. These three cohorts started with an Index score of 100, and each subsequent year their indices increased or decreased based on the enrollment of that age cohort. In the fall of 2025, the Index for graduate students 24-and-under was 138.7, the highest ever recorded. For graduate students 30-and-older that same semester, the Index was 83.8, the lowest ever recorded. Grad students in the middle cohort decreased their most recent Index score to 98.6.

The fact that universities have increased the number of graduate programs or that major economic disruptions have increased the desire to obtain additional credentials should be relevant to all age cohorts, and not just the youngest ones. So why are we only seeing growth in the youngest age cohorts? I have four theories.

First, the COVID-19 pandemic was not only an economic disruption but also a disruption to everyday life. For any student who graduated from high school in 2016 or later, they had some sort of high school or college experience impacted by the pandemic. A return to graduate school may be a way for them to experience a “normal” school life when so many other areas of their lives were overrun by COVID.

Another theory is that the market for hiring recent college undergraduates has shrunk. According to data in the chart below from the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), the pace at which firms are hiring undergraduates for entry-level roles has slowed. Reasons for this are varied, but for our purposes we can assume that a tighter hiring climate for younger workers specifically gives them reasons to pursue additional degrees to remain competitive in the marketplace.

A third theory is what Jean Twenge referred to as delayed adulthood or slow-life theory. The premise here is that today’s graduate students (yesterday’s high school seniors) are passing through certain developmental life stages (like drinking alcohol, dating, or obtaining a driver’s license) later in life than their grandparents, parents, or even their older siblings. For example, in 1979, over 90% of high school seniors had tried alcohol. In 2016, only 67% of seniors had tried alcohol. In 1984, only 13% of seniors had never been on a date. By 2016, 36% of seniors had never been on a date. In 1989, 86% of high school seniors had their driver’s license, while only 73% of high school seniors in 2016 had their driver’s license.

Previous generations looked at high school as a way to grow up while undergraduate school was their way to learn a specific career skill. Perhaps today’s graduate students are looking at their undergraduate careers as a way to learn how to become an adult while graduate school now becomes the place they learn a specific trade skill.

The last theory about why graduate students are getting younger is simply because undergraduate students are getting younger too. This trend is not nearly as pronounced at the undergraduate level as it is at the graduate level, but undergraduates are also becoming younger. This is primarily due to high school seniors taking dual enrollment courses while still in high school. As a high school student, obtaining more college credits prior to enrolling in undergraduate studies allows them to graduate faster.

Below is the data from the National Student Clearinghouse regarding the age cohorts of undergraduate students. While the change in the share of younger undergraduates has dramatically increased, the overall proportion of younger undergraduate students still remains small.

The Changes to Campus Life

We know that graduate students are getting younger. We also have some reasons to explain this trend. Next is the most important question: so what? Why should universities care that their graduate students are getting younger?

For private universities where tuition dollars are the primary drivers of revenue, it is often the graduate tuition dollars that make up the majority of this revenue stream. Therefore, if universities view themselves as in the business of providing education to their customers (i.e., their graduate students), then they would be wise to adapt to the changing demographics and needs of their customers. Today’s graduate students aren’t just younger versions of previous cohorts. They are a new type of consumer: the undergraduate-plus student.

The traditional graduate student was not a heavy user of campus facilities. Typically, they were students in their late-twenties or early-thirties. They lived off campus and had their own transportation. They may have had a spouse and might even have had children. They often had full-time careers and were coming to campus once or twice a week, usually in the evenings, to take three-hour lecture or seminar courses. They came to campus, took their class, and then they left. With these more traditional graduate students, the town-gown dynamics were easier to manage. The “studentification” impacts in the immediate neighborhood around campuses were less strenuous. There needed to be fewer purpose-built student housing complexes, fewer concerns over disruptive student behavior, and generally better property upkeep. In essence, the traditional graduate student was both a part of the town and the gown, and therefore wanted to maximize their positive impacts in both arenas.

Today’s undergraduate-plus students are much heavier utilizers of campus. Many of them treat graduate school as their full-time job. And without them having as much full-time or real-world experiences, many of today’s graduate students are coming straight from undergraduate school, where they are used to their undergraduate routines. These often include on-campus housing, on-campus dining, on-campus health and wellness services, and active learning classrooms.

Today’s younger graduate students want the convenience of on-campus amenities without the association of undergraduate life. They want housing, but prefer apartment-style suites instead of communal dorms. They want grab-and-go food services instead of traditional dining halls and meal plans. And they want their classrooms to be flexible and tech-capable with natural light and moveable furniture.

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Demographics are Destiny

For decades, institutions have planned around broad categories like undergraduate or graduate students. Those categories were useful because they generally reflected meaningful differences in how students lived, learned, and interacted with campus. Today, those distinctions are blurred as graduate students spend more time on campus, seek stronger connections to university life, and expect a wider range of services and amenities than previous generations of graduate students.

Demographic change arrives gradually enough to go unnoticed until the evidence becomes impossible to ignore. Universities that continue to plan around the graduate student of 25 years ago risk operating academic programs, student services, and building facilities for a population that no longer exists. Worse, universities that do not adapt to their changing student populations risk closing entirely. While fewer students enrolled overall at an institution can certainly lead to its death spiral, having the wrong products and services for the right population (or vice versa) will also lead to a university’s demise.

Graduate students are changing. The question is whether the campus will change with them.