The Monkey Cage

What a dumb list. Boston OK but Washington DC and Montreal as college towns?

Paul:
Eat your heart out. Washington DC is a great college town. Come visit sometime and you’ll see thousands of enormous-tuition-paying but totally blissed-out students. It’s a wonderful place to live and especially to be a political scientist.

I’ll take Berkeley, Montreal, DC, and Boston, easily. But Amherst? Really?

I spent a summer at Amherst College teaching IR to high school students, and though the local pizza place is as good as they say, that (along with one good coffee place and one good burrito place) is pretty much it for the town. To amuse the students, we’d take them to the local Target, or if they were really good, Northampton (which is pretty much the same as any small, cute New England “city”). Otherwise, it was “get in the van kids, we’re going to Boston.”

If I were redoing the list, I’d keep the other four at the top, and add San Diego (lots of students, perfect weather, beaches, Mexican food), Portland (artsy & cultural, affordable, easy to get around), and maybe Toronto. I’d probably also throw in a couple small college towns on the list. I imagine that’s why they picked Amherst, but is that really the best there is? Surely there’s a place with more functional use for the outdoors—Boulder perhaps? Or Burlington, VT?

Note: The title of the original story was “Top 5 College Towns in North America”. Montreal is not an American town. If it were any city in English Canada, I might not have quibbled with this. But in French Canada? This cannot stand!

“*Note: To make it on this list, students should have opportunities to interact with those from other institutions on a regular basis. Unfortunately, that eliminated traditional college towns like Austin, Texas; State College, Pa.; Ames, Iowa; and Boulder, Colo.” (And I would add Madison, WI.)