2 Alabama college towns most vulnerable to COVID

[aubiefifty 18,231]

2 Alabama college towns most vulnerable to COVID-19

By William Thornton | wthornton@al.com

3 minutes

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Jedrick Wills is moving from right tackle in college to left tackle in the NFL. (AP Photo/Vasha Hunt, File)AP

Alabama has two cities that may be among the most vulnerable in the nation to the economic impact on universities by the coronavirus pandemic.

You probably won’t have to guess which two.

SmartAsset is out with a study charting college towns that may experience the most pain from diminished demand for typical collegiate expenditures, such as eating out and attending sporting events.

The survey placed Auburn as tied for the 10th most vulnerable city, and Tuscaloosa at No. 21. At the top is Bloomington, Ind., home of Indiana University at Bloomington.

The SEC also placed two other schools - College Station, Texas, home of Texas A&M, was at No. 2., while Athens, Ga., placed at No. 4.

The study compared 95 college towns with populations of 50,000 or more across six metrics. First off was students as a percentage of the population, followed by college staff as a percentage of workers. It also used U.S. Census Bureau data to look at local businesses’ reliant on college student and parent or guardian spending, such as concentration of restaurants and bars, entertainment establishments, bookstores and hotels.

Many of the cities that made the ranking are situated in the Midwest and South. All of the cities in the top 10 have city populations of less than 125,000, with students and staff making up large percentages of the population and workforce. More than two in 10 residents are undergraduate students, and more than one in 10 workers are employed by the local four-year institution.

Auburn tied for 10th with Ames, Iowa. The study stated that Auburn has the eighth-highest percentage of students relative to the population, at 30.36 percent, and the 15th-highest percentage of college staff relative to workers, at 19.26 percent. It also ranks in the worst fifth of college towns for concentration of restaurants, bars and hotels.

Students are 21.13 percent of Tuscaloosa’s population, while 15 percent are staff, the study said. Tuscaloosa’s concentration of bars and restaurants was slightly smaller as a percentage than Auburn’s (8.42 compared to 9.98), but its percentage of entertainment venues was larger (1.34 percent to .86 percent).

[Dual-Threat Rigby 9,046]

I havent really surfed through Tuscaloosa, but as I understand and have heard from some students, they have a strip where most of the places the students hit up are located. I'd assume it's not directly linked to the campus (meaning you can just walk off and hit up a bar asap) with how much more land is there. So even if they do have more venues, it's something to be said to have the option to totally avoid that area and still be able to enjoy the other offerings near or on the campus. Again, just a guess from cobbling info and what little time I spent in the city

Auburn is the polar opposite. I think what makes it bad, and what has led to outbreaks, is that there's minimal separation between who frequents a bar and who frequents Little Italy's. From a consumer or worker perspective. And those consumers that aren't affiliated with the school can very easily step on campus and come into contact with students. It's going to make enforcing masks in that town and downtown paramount to any fantasy of not just sports, but a in-person semester