Last month, Stanford University’s campus newspaper revealed that one of the school’s latest accomplishments had a serious flaw. Acknowledging the skyrocketing cost of living in the area and the challenge that poses, particularly for postdoctoral fellows, the university had acquired a large apartment complex to convert into affordable housing. But when postdocs actually applied to live there, they were frustrated to discover they didn’t qualify—because their salaries, set by the university, were too low.
In other words, the university had patted itself on the back for helping postdocs find a place to live, but its solution turned out to financially exclude, you know, postdocs. Oops!
Reading about this power move, or veiled slight, or arithmetic error, or whatever it was, I kept thinking about a quote that circulated on social media last month. (Full disclosure, I’ve tried and absolutely cannot verify the source of this quote—but regardless, it stuck with me, so that seems reason enough to share it.) It was a commentary on city livability, affordability, and wealth inequality. The gist was that if you live within 15 minutes of a coffee shop, but the barista can’t afford to live within half an hour, then you don’t live in a city—you live in a theme park. Which is exactly what some universities are becoming, sometimes literally.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I love a good theme park. I mean, there are lots of college-related rides I’d love to see: the Haunted Dorm, the Tilt-a-Squirrel, the Tunnel of Loans. But the quote isn’t about rides. It’s referring to the undeniable appeal of an artificially constructed community that’s safe, clean, and fun—but which no one should mistake for an organic, equitable space. It’s about the beauty of upscale places, which can indeed be beautiful, but are considerably less so if you can only afford to look at them.
A university is like a city—a walkable city with a lower than normal average age and a higher than normal number of bike racks, but a city nonetheless. And a city is a community that benefits from financially diverse residents living, working, and interacting in public. But in too many of those cities, postdocs—not to mention grad students and other campus workers—are priced out.
When a university’s financial decisions force its workers to the fringes, but keep the product of their work central, then congratulations, it has created a theme park, a wondrous place designed to delight the customers but ignore the workers. For too many, that theme park is the Crappiest Place on Earth.
Postdocs in particular are prone to neglect, as the general between-ness of their position can render them functionally invisible—all the more reason Stanford’s blunder stung. It’s like the university was saying to them, “Here, we’ve created this program to show our dedication to helping you, but it won’t actually help you. Helped us show dedication, though!”
Of course, they aren’t the only ones suffering from Theme Park University, desperately searching Craigslist for half an exurban basement and a used bicycle to escape the cost of on-campus parking. Postdoc salaries make grad students jealous, and campus workers are perpetually lobbying for a living wage. At least Stanford acknowledged the existence of the affordable housing crunch. Other schools do nothing, trusting that their critical workers will somehow make something work. “Not our problem, la la la can’t hear you, but look at our shiny new stadium!”
In the absence of actual affordable housing, raising wages—especially in areas with a high cost of living—is always a good start. Grad students and postdocs have been demanding fair wages for years. That drumbeat isn’t just about raw numbers; it’s about fighting against exclusion from the theme park. It’s about the well-funded institutions of higher education that can raise new buildings and landscape their quads and lavish wealth upon lacrosse coaches, but when their improvements make the university and its environs a lovely place to live, forcing up property values, they’re content to maintain themselves as enclaves, not as part of a community.
I’ve never figured out how grad students and postdocs can live in a city like Palo Alto on their university stipends. I guess the universities haven’t figured it out either.
Until universities pay workers a salary that lets them realistically live nearby, or make other significant investments toward that goal, let’s at least stop pretending that they’ve created an idyllic community for all. It’s just an idyllic theme park, and that’s not the same thing. Just ask the postdocs at Stanford who probably side-eye the “postdoc apartments” every morning during their commute from Nevada.
