The Wall Street Journal ran an article which had your humble author giggling for hours afterwards called Sorry Harvard Everyone Wants to Go to College in the South Now. Nothing against Harvard, mind you. Some love hanging around with silver spoon kids trying to work out their misplaced guilt over their parents’ success with protests over micro-aggressions. If that is your cup of tea, then sip away. As the Wall Street Journal noted however a growing number of northern students have decided to try a different flavor of tea (sweet) down south:
A growing number of high-school seniors in the North are making an unexpected choice for college: They are heading to Clemson, Georgia Tech, South Carolina, Alabama and other universities in the South.
Students say they are searching for the fun and school spirit emanating from the South on their social-media feeds. Their parents cite lower tuition and less debt, and warmer weather. College counselors also say many teens are eager to trade the political polarization ripping apart campuses in New England and New York for the sense of community epitomized by the South’s football Saturdays. Promising job prospects after graduation can sweeten the pot.
The number of Northerners going to Southern public schools went up 84% over the past two decades, and jumped 30% from 2018 to 2022, a Wall Street Journal analysis of the latest available Education Department data found.
What kind of fun? How about Vanderbilt students carrying a goal post down Nashville’s Honky Tonk Highway in triumph after defeating the top ranked Alabama Crimson Tide? Ever been to the Grove in Oxford on a game day? The Ole Miss folks claim while they may not win every game, they have never lost a party. Take my word for it, you won’t regret putting it on your bucket list:
College students are not the only ones heading south. The Census Bureau has a nifty tool to allow you to track where young adults are leaving and where they are going. As an earlier Wall Street Journal article detailed:
Daniel Brookings Institution demographer William Frey details this in a September report. Describing what he calls “a virtual evacuation from many northern areas,” Mr. Frey writes the “movement is largely driven by younger, college-educated Black Americans, from both northern and western places of origin…But an undeniable reality, emphasized by Gov. DeSantis, is that this movement is overwhelmingly driven by the prospect of greater economic opportunity.
It is not just economic opportunity that might attract young adults south-educational opportunity just might do so as well, and not just of the college sort. What would cause a “virtual evacuation” for northern areas? How about things like the entire Chicago school board resigning in protest as a teacher union affiliated mayor plunges the district into a debt spiral?
In times like these, Chicagoans should ask themselves WWEMD (What Would Eddie Murphy Do?) Here’s a hint: that disembodied demonic voice is not urging you to hang around in Chicago. Quite the opposite:
