It’s hard not to notice that some university towns are just so fine—full of funky, owner-operated bookstores, clubs, and cafes—while others are just so, well, not fine.
What, I used to wonder to myself, made Bloomington so hip, and West Lafayette so not? Why the major differences between Ann Arbor and East Lansing?
Here’s my theory: What Blooomington and Ann Arbor got that West Lafayette and East Lansing don’t is legions of arts and humanities types who never finished their Ph.D.’s. If you scratch the surface of the great venues in the hip university towns, you’ll find this is true. A lot of the great hang-out joints have been created by would-be professors who, to the delight of local people who actually finished their degrees, failed to get past the ABD stage but used their sensibilites for good anyway.
So, how to make the West Lafayettes of the world better? Clearly such towns would need funding at the local universities to create arts and humanities graduate programs that would draw the right types, but that would not allow very many of them to graduate. Ideally, while they are doing their course work, these soon-to-be members of Slackademia should take some classes in business, to ensure that, when they do set up great places like the Village Deli and the Runcible Spoon in Bloomington, they succeed.
Such a plan would also handily provide employment opportunities to a lot of the arts and humanities folks for whom there is virtually no employment in the academy proper.
Bottom line: Less slacking, less lip-smacking. More loafing…um…more good loaves of bread.
How is it I haven’t been given a Genius Award yet?