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I’m a city boy who is a convert to small college town life.
Growing up just outside of Boston (in Brookline), I internalized the benefits of city life. Population and employer density, mass transit, and the endless options of modern urban life (all those restaurants!) seemed like the only way to live.
For the past 10 years I’ve lived and worked in a small college town. I’ve made the argument for the benefits small college town life for creative thinking, collaboration, and academic productivity.
What I’ve also discovered is that small college town life is also conducive for a sort of work / family balance that may be difficult to achieve in large urban or suburban settings.
Achieving academic work and family life balance is no small feat. Higher ed jobs are jobs that never end. Everyone that I know who works in higher ed works all the time. The image of the laid-back college professor or free-time enjoying academic staff member does not conform to any reality that I’ve observed (or lived).
Careers in postsecondary education are competitive, subject to external shocks and forces, and too often zero-sum. In an age of permanent scarcity and 24/7/365 expectations - and where everyone is tethered to the work and each other by laptops and smart phones - the work never stops.
The intensity of an academic career does not depend on location. Urban and suburban academics (faculty and non-faculty) face just as much career pressure as their small college town counterparts.
What is perhaps different for those of us living and working in small college towns is that we enjoy the benefits of scale.
Small scale that is.
Our small college town communities are tight-knit. We know each other both as colleagues and as parents (and siblings and caregivers). We interact as co-workers, and as citizens.
The fact that we cross paths with our colleagues across so many dimensions of life tends to act as a leveler. Workplace academic hierarchies are less salient when we frequently interact at the grocery story, school plays and concerts, and at the local diner (or bar).
There are strong incentives to be civil and respectful to each other on campus, given that the odds are high that we will run into each other in town (or at the town dump).
I think that this recognition that we all lead complicated lives - as our fully complicated lives are always visible to each other - leads to more empathy when work / life challenges do emerge.
We are forgiving of our colleagues who need to miss work to attend to a sick kid or an aging parent, as we know those kids and parents.
We get that sometimes other things need to take priority beyond the immediate demands of institution, as there is a good chance that we’ve talked with our co-workers about our non-work lives.
The lack of anonymity in small college towns may drive some folks crazy. Many of my colleagues choose to live a few town over from our campus because they feel the need to sometimes get away from the people they see at work all day.
This is a choice that I understand, but I think that those who choose not to live nearby to campus get most of the benefits of the supportive work / family culture that small college town life engenders. (And I don’t want to understate the challenges of finding affordable housing close to campus).
Urban life - and academic urban life - have plenty of champions.
We need more public enthusiasts for the benefits of small town college life.
Are you also a small college town academic?
How’s it going?
