Urbanists Overreact to Students, #1 Study Abroad Spot, & More - Around the College Town
Links related to urbanism and higher ed for the week of Nov. 17 - 23.
Note: each week Around the College Town features a list of links from stories I am reading that are related to urbanism and higher ed, often combining both. This will include a brief commentary on each link. I try not to cover the biggest stories here, but rather ones that may have fallen through the cracks.
Penn State Students Hold Vigil for Closing McDonald’s, Urbanists Don’t Get Joke
A McDonald’s recently closed near the Penn State campus and some students held a candlelight vigil to mourn the loss of the drunken, late-night food spot. The vigil was obviously meant to be a joke. The local Penn State Barstool account was even the organizer, and the memorial had a bag of buns and a little sticky note that said “long live McDonald's.” Pretty funny—a fun, goofy night for college students. These little dumb moments make college memorable.
But fellow urbanists on Twitter did not find it funny. Many made fun of the students for being NIMBYs, hurling derisions at the participants (though McNIMBYs is a pretty funny name itself). They could not see it as a joke. This particularly annoys me because I do not want to see the movement get bogged down into angry, bitter scolding, devoid of fun. I know it’s frustrating to go to town hall meetings and fight for new housing. But we have to maintain some levity in our fights.
Mississippi College Changes Name to MCU
Mississippi College is no more, now it will be known as Mississippi Christian University (MCU)—not to be confused with the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Universities change their name quite a bit actually. Look at any institution’s Wikipedia and you will likely find several name iterations, especially true for those going from ‘College’ to ‘University’. There was some interesting chatter on the college football subreddit.
The first coed college to award degrees to women
One of the last colleges in the US to desegregate
Currently ranked as one the worst colleges in the US for LGBT students
While I had a chuckle at this one, other users were lamenting the loss of a college football program, as the university is also cutting the sport. I hope it works out for MCU, but sometimes institutional name changes are signs of trouble. Many of the colleges that have recently closed also had recent name changes; that was certainly the case for those that I visited this summer.
IIE Releases its International Student and Study Abroad Data
The Institute of International Education (IIE) released its Open Doors data on international students this week, the 75th anniversary of the data. There were no big surprises.
The #1 spot for American students to study abroad? Italy! Who can blame them? I even studied in Italy back during my undergrad. I woke up every morning to a sunrise over a vineyard with a castle in the distance. Picturesque, magical.
From my own experience, I understand why almost 40% of American students study abroad in just 3 places: Italy, the UK, and Spain. The top-ranking non-European country is Japan with just 3.4% and then Costa Rica at 2.3% of American students abroad. I was surprised to see South Korea only ranked 11th at 2.2%, but I was not surprised that China was not on the list at all.
Duke Votes to Increase Enrollment on China Campus
Speaking of China, Duke University opened Duke Kunshan in 2013 following the wave of branch campuses abroad. These were especially popular in China and East Asia broadly, but they have faced turbulence in recent years, with questions of academic freedom and other political or social concerns. For instance, Yale founded a similar campus in Singapore in 2011, and ended the relationship in 2021, with Yale-NUS being merged into National University of Singapore.
Duke, on the other hand, is now negotiating a renewal of its China partnership by next year, according to Duke Today. The university did announce it will expand the admitted enrollment to 550, up from 500 in previous years. That’s probably a good sign the relationship can continue. We need more American students studying in China, not less. So Duke’s continued presence is welcomed as a valuable entry point into the country. I hope to visit the campus in the coming years.
A Story About Student Evaluations via The r/Professor Subreddit
Finally, it’s that time again—the end of the semester. For educators, this means student evaluation season. If you aren’t a teacher, you may not realize how stressful, annoying, and painful student evaluations can be. A professor shared an example of this with a story posted to the r/Professor Subreddit. Their student left terrible reviews and complained about the prof years ago. But when the prof ran into the student recently, the student admitted that they were wrong and "immature, a jerk, and a real pain". While it’s nice to hear this, it doesn’t make up for the annoyance that comes from student evaluations.
Frankly, students do not know how to evaluate. It is not something they are ever trained to do, they are just supposed to have expert knowledge after the end of every course. Why do we expect this? Why don’t we offer training and retrospection to students? This is a huge complaint in the educator community, and schools have never really figured out how to grapple with the issue.