By Alexis Terry
Baltimore Watchdog Staff Writer
May is a prime time for college decisions. Typically, students have their minds made up and are sending housing deposits to their college of choice.
They’ve spent the last few months — or perhaps longer — weighing costs, academic fit, social life and other factors. One often overlooked factor is the college town.
In 2017, Towson enrolled 2,741 students out of the 9,854 it admitted. The location was a plus for many.
“I had no interest in coming to Towson until I visited and knew it was perfect for me,” said Kayla Hester, a junior at Towson University. “The surrounding area and the size of the campus itself was exactly what I wanted.”
Hester also was drawn to the bar scene nearby. “At the time, I wasn’t going to the bars because I was underage, but now that I’m 21, it makes it so convenient to go out because I can walk to and from,” she said.
Kelly Cadwallader, a junior at Towson University, had a similar mindset when choosing colleges.
“Towson was not my first choice, but I didn’t even have to walk on campus to realize this is where I wanted to be,” she said. She explained how much she loved the surrounding area in terms of what was available for things to do in her free time. “It was like I was in a city, but I really wasn’t. It was the perfect balance.”
Cadwallader is now a student ambassador for Towson’s admissions office, where she deals with students choosing among colleges every day. She has found that her experience is commonplace — many students fall in love with the surrounding area of Towson and it, in fact, is the deciding factor for a lot of students.
Restaurants and retail shops appeal to many students. They like that everything is close by. Most first-year students do not bring their cars to campus, so having everything in close proximity is important to them, Cadwallader said.
Students that Cadwallader speaks to in the admissions office are largely choosing among colleges in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic. An analysis of the towns where these schools are located — 50 with populations between 20,000 and 2000,000 were randomly selected from the U.S. News & World Report’s Northeast regional colleges list — found that Towson fares well in many categories.
[infogram id=”457f0d7c-cd50-496f-ba2e-d0fc29436837″ prefix=”jhC” format=”interactive” title=”Median Household income”]
Towson’s median household income is $74,828, which is roughly $21,000 over the average median household income of $53,893 among these 50 college towns. This puts Towson among one of the more affluent college towns in the Northeast region.
“Towson students are living in a wealthy community,” said Sherri Billheimer, facilitator of the Community Development and Global Citizenship program at Arundel High School. “Students choosing to live off campus have to battle with affordable housing in a college town populated by wealthy adults.”
The Community Development and Global Citizenship program works with different communities to help students grasp the understanding of what it means to be a “passionate and engaged” future leader in not only the local communities they are in but their global communities as well.
For Towson’s relatively urban surrounding, the poverty rate still remains lower than the average poverty rate of Northeastern college towns students are choosing among. Most of the Maryland college towns have a poverty rate under the average. The outliers are towns like Salisbury (27 percent) and College Park (30 percent). Both of these towns are young as far as median age goes, which could contribute to the high poverty rate.
[infogram id=”9438d82e-7736-4e81-8fa2-c42e05526525″ prefix=”rBd” format=”interactive” title=”Towson has a white majority”]
Towson exceeds the average white population of most college towns.
“I considered the town of Towson to be pretty diverse,” Cadwallader said.
Billheimer explained that it is easy for urban-suburban areas like Towson to be mistaken as diverse. “Students see the urban infrastructure of the town and assume diversity because urban places are traditionally diverse,” Billheimer said.
In addition to office spaces and healthcare careers in Towson, it is also made up of service sector jobs that minorities traditionally hold, that may come from more diverse neighborhoods that lack job opportunity, so it is easy to confuse the actual population working with the people working in their population, Billheimer explained.
“The data surrounding the people of Towson does not surprise me,” said Billheimer. She explained the demographics work together. “High household income, low poverty, an older community…higher household income.”
However, college town data does not take the students into account because they are not permanent residents of the community. If students were taken into these measures, the numbers would change drastically.
[infogram id=”97478e8d-8997-40b5-919b-87d1cf951154″ prefix=”Z1y” format=”interactive” title=”Health Care & Social Assistance is the Top Industry”]
The U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics cites nursing as one of the fastest-growing careers in the country. Billheimer talked about the high school seniors she works with at Arundel. “Many of them are interested in healthcare professions because that’s where the money is.”
Like the majority of college towns in the dataset, Towson’s top industry is healthcare and social assistance. This can be attributed to Towson being the home of three primary sources of healthcare in the area: UM St. Joseph Medical Center, Greater Baltimore Medical Center and Sheppard Pratt Health System.
The data illustrates that Towson is a livable place for established adults. But is it a “livable” college town?
“Yes and no,” said Hester. “It’s expensive to live close to campus, and the town doesn’t exactly support college students like how easy it is to get kicked out of your apartment just because the neighbors don’t understand that you can’t raise a family in an apartment building with majority college kids.”
Added Billheimer: “One of the most important things as far as community is concerned is that the town supports everyone — a town where the university population works in unison with the townspeople.”
Mia Grau, a sophomore at Towson, enjoys sharing the space with families. “Towson has a home-y, yet updated feel. Being surrounded by homes makes it feel lived in and not so alienating”
Cadwallader is approaching her senior year at Towson, where she will continue to advocate for education, but in a different way. She is entering the teaching profession following education. She is excited to see how Towson transforms in the next years as interest from prospective students across the region is growing.