This blog is overrated.

What’s the difference between a “classic college town”, a “college friendly city” and a “college centered city”? You won’t get many clear answers from this befuddling Inside Higher Ed story. Madison and Boston are somehow both exemplars of the third category, while Ann Arbor fits into the first, a group characterized by “dive bars and bookstores and movie theaters that still charge less than a meal.” A movie ticket in Ann Arbor does indeed cost less than a meal in Ann Arbor.

There’s not a lot new here. Academics want to move to “your usual suspects of hot cities to live: New York, Seattle, San Francisco and Austin” (although, as pointed out in the comments, they often have very little choice.) This has been the case for a long time. Long enough, anyway, that if your job is compiling a best-cities list every year, you might almost be inclined to start touting Provo and Boise just to break up the monotony. Or at least to transfer the monotony to anyone credulous enough to take your rankings seriously.