Your City's "Pittsburgh" Bar

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Both Oxford and Cambridge were major English cities when Oxbridge were established.

Oxford and Cambridge were the blueprint for the American "college town".

[craigs]

Originally Posted by sopas ej

USC to me is interesting because it's the oldest private university in California

Santa Clara University and the University of the Pacific were founded in 1851; Mills College and Antioch College in 1852; the University of San Francisco in 1855; and so on. The University of Spoiled Children (USC) was founded in 1880.

[iheartthed]

I agree that there is an anti-urban element to the American personality, but I don't think that's strongly related to how our universities were set up. The U.S. didn't really have any big cities when the country was established. New York and Philadelphia, the two largest cities by far, were podunk towns compared to European capitals in the Revolutionary Era. Yet all but one of the Ivy League schools had been founded by the time the Declaration of Independence was written.

[sopas ej]

Originally Posted by craigs

Santa Clara University and the University of the Pacific were founded in 1851; Mills College and Antioch College in 1852; the University of San Francisco in 1855; and so on. The University of Spoiled Children (USC) was founded in 1880.

There must be a semantic difference...

I didn't think Mills College existed anymore? Maybe Antioch College isn't officially a university?

Ah, I looked it up: The University of Spoiled Children is the oldest private research university in California.

[harls]

Originally Posted by mrnyc

don't forget yinz.

pittsburghers are yinzers.

you gotta add the appalachian in there.

Ha! One of my greatest friends is from King of Prussia, he hates it when I call him out on his Yuengling love.

[SIGSEGV]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

of the top 25 US national universities according to USNWR 2022:


13 are in the city-propers of significant cities that anchor 1M+ metro areas:
- columbia (NYC)
- Uchicago (chicago)
- UPenn (philly)
- duke (durham)
- johns hopkins (baltimore)
- brown (providence)
- vanderbilt (nashville)
- washU (st. louis)
- rice (houston)
- UCLA (LA)
- emory (atlanta)
- georgetown (DC)
- carnegie mellon (pittsburgh)


5 are in city-adjacent inner-ring burbs that are somewhat "city-like":
- harvard (boston)
- MIT (boston)
- cal tech (LA)
- northwestern (chicago)
- UC berkely (bay area)


4 are in further flung towns that are now part of major MSAs/CSAs:
- princeton (NYC)
- yale (NYC)
- stanford (bay area)
- Umichigan (detroit)


3 are in the relative middle of nowhere:
- dartmouth
- cornell
- notre dame

To add to this:
- MIT was founded in Boston, moved to Cambridge later
- Part of Harvard campus is in Boston (though not the original portion).
- Stanford was founded by a mostly SF family (the Stanfords) on their nearby farm, even if it was kind of in the middle of nowhere, it wasn't really that inaccessible
- A big portion of Northwestern's campus is in Chicago (Med, law).
- Not sure South Bend counts as middle of nowhere in the same was as Hanover or Ithaca .

Though to subtract, most of Wash U is outside St. Louis city limits, though I'm not sure which the original campus is (currently mostly only the Medical and social work campuses are in St. Louis, with a tiny sliver of the main "Danforth" campus, the rest of which is in University City).

[SIGSEGV]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Oxbridge were important cities prior to establishment of their namesake universities. Basically all the other top UK universities are in London.

Heidelberg was also a very important German city, historically. And all the other important German universities are in the biggest cities. The first German-language university was in Prague, BTW. And Heidelberg doesn't have a U.S.-style campus; it has buildings scattered in a city, like all the German universities.

In the U.S., you have very elite universities founded in nothing. Stanford is "The Farm". Cornell has a super-isolated location in the Finger Lakes hills. Dartmouth is in a tiny speck of a village. Williams and Amherst are essentially in the woods. The concept of Ann Arbors, Madisons and the like don't really exist elsewhere.

The best Canadian universities are in Toronto/Montreal/Vancouver, the best French universities in Paris, the best Japanese universities in Tokyo, etc.

Ok, what about Leiden, Groningen, Nijmegen (all Dutch), Uppsala, Lund (both Swedith), Leuven and Ghent (Belgian?), Göttingen, Erlangen, Tubingen ( all German), Tartu (Estonian), Coimbra (Portugueses), Cluj and Iaşi (Romanian)
Those are the ones I can think of off hand though I'm sure there are some in Italy and Spain too. I know there are tons of labs in random places too in Europe (not exactly universities but... DESY Zeuthen, Gran Sasso in L'Aquila, the French labs in Grenoble, etc... though these are more modern than universities).