Joel On Boston

Boston is one of my favorite cities. Joel On Software is planning a programmer's conference for September, and describes the city:

Boston is absolutely beautiful in September. The weather is usually perfect. You can go kayaking on the Charles [River] or take the Duck Tour(*) if you're unambitious. Over 250,000 college students have just arrived, full of completely unjustifiable hope and optimism. The summer tourist crowd has mostly gone home so you can get into museums and historical sites. There are plenty of coffee shops that aren't NASDAQ-listed.

Unfortunately, last time I was in Boston, it was middle of July and weather-dreadful. With daughter in tow, we endured umbrella-less downpours resulting from a passing tropical storm. Yuck!

(*) Duck Tours uses my photo of Newbury Street on their Web site's interactive tour.

Comments

[Tony]

250,000 college students? At what colleges? That's about 8 mega (30,000 student) universities, and I don't think there are any in Boston (UMass-Boston is about 12K).

[Len]

In greater Boston, besides UMass Boston, there are MIT, Harvard, Boston College, Boston University, Emerson, Simmons, Bentley, Babson Welseley... and thats just off the top of my head. There are probably are other smaller colleges too.

There are lots of college students in Boston.

[Tony]

Len, those numbers still don't add up: I'd call many of those small. Here are the numbers:
UMass Boston 10,000
MIT 4200
Harvard 6650
BC 9100
Boston U 18,500
Emerson 3,500
Simmons 2,100
Bentley 4,200
Babson 1,800
Welseley 2,400

Total: 62,450, or about 25% of the claimed total (and note that many of these aren't in Boston proper). OK, add in another 10 colleges at 2,000 each and grad students - and you're still really reaching for even 50% of the claimed number.

Maybe 250,000 is the total number for grad schools, 4 year, community colleges, and technical colleges (e.g. Heald or equiv) for Boston and a generous swath of the surrounding area - but it's still bogus when talking about the city of Boston - it'd be like claiming San Francisco has 250,000 college students (yeah, right!) and counting Stanford, Berkeley, San Jose State, Ohlone College, CSU Hayward, UC Davis, UC Santa Cruz, Gavilan College, etc.

[Matt]

I'm sure 250,000 is a rough figure - and of course it matters where you draw the line on "Greater Boston"... But if you do go out, say 10-12 miles from downtown, in addition to the schools listed, there are also probably another 30-40 small to medium colleges and universities (not even getting down the community college level) - including schools like Tufts, Northeastern, Wheelock, Emmanuel, Lasell, Hellenic, Brandeis, Olin, Curry, Quincy, etc...

Anyway - why quibble? it's a friggin' lot...