Not long ago, I had to choose where to go for college. My criteria were simple: a school that would accept me and that had low tuition. So my list was short—UNR and UNLV.
It was, at the time, a Hobson's Choice. I knew I didn't want to spend five years of my life going to school up in the Truckee Meadows, and I also didn't want to stay at home for five years and lose out on a true "college experience."
I wound up choosing the latter, and five years after I made that decision, I don't regret it. UNLV wasn't nearly as bad as it was made out to be in my high school days, and the experience led me to find a path in life that has certainly been an enjoyable one.
But to this day, I wish I'd have had a third choice. I was happy to see Nevada State College open in Henderson, because many who want to see UNLV become a premier urban university believe that that will only be possible when NSC draws away less serious college students.
But that wasn't the third choice I would have liked as a high school senior. Nevada State, like UNLV, doesn't really provide a chance to leave home and go through that legendary experience.
The third choice I wanted is the third choice available in almost every other state in the West. As a matter of fact, Nevadans have fewer higher education options than any other Western state except Wyoming.
Nevada is the fifth-largest western state, with just under 2 million residents in the last census. But New Mexico, with 200,000 fewer people, has eight public universities, Idaho's 1.2 million people are served by three universities, and the less than 1 million denizens of Big Sky Montana have six public to choose from.
Not only do our western brethren have more options to choose from, they have higher enrollment at those schools.
Nevada's made strides. The community college at Elko now offers a couple of four-year degrees, and the aforementioned Nevada State means that four public institutions in Nevada offer baccalaureates. At last month's Board of Regents meeting, the groundwork was laid for a new state college to serve rapidly-growing Pahrump, as well as an extension campus of UNLV on the north side of Las Vegas.
But while those schools will offer degrees to people who wouldn't otherwise be able to go to UNLV daily to attend class, Nevada's focus is myopic.
As the 1,800 or so UNR students from Clark County make the trip up U.S. 95, they pass through dying towns like Beatty, Goldfield, Tonopah and Luning. Elsewhere in the state, Ely, Eureka and Pioche continue to struggle.
Pahrump is a lovely town, and has a lot going for it. It will undoubtedly continue to grow and would indeed benefit from a state college of some kind. But what economic impact would a state college have on Pahrump? It's one thing to stay at home in Las Vegas through college, but can you imagine a Pahrump native going to college there, spending the first 23 years of their life in that valley?
Nevada lacks a true college town.
Take a trip to Flagstaff. Northern Arizona University helps to make Flagstaff a quintessential college town, with its bars, its Lumberjacks fans, its kids escaping Phoenix, Tucson and even Las Vegas to go to school in the mountain air.
Go up to Salt Lake, and you pass through Cedar City, where Southern Utah students pile into the Centrum arena on cold winter nights to watch their Thunderbirds play basketball and succeed in making Cedar a college town without the luxury of a row of college bars. Both are growing communities, helped significantly by an influx of intellectual professors and money-to-spare in-state students.
Imagine, then, what a state university could do for, say, Pioche. The liveliest-looking place in Pioche is the two-pump Chevron station. The mines have dried up, there's not enough wood for a timber industry and the town's too far off the highway to sustain much of a tourism enterprise.
But what would an influx of 5,000 undergraduate students do for a place like Pioche and the surrounding communities? Not only would professors and students spend their income in the area, but a few of them might even decide to stay after their time is up at Sagebrush State University. The town that's dwindled to around 800 residents would almost be overloaded with new opportunities. Compare that to the impact of adding 5,000 students to Pahrump, with 25,000 residents, or opening an extension campus of UNLV in North Las Vegas, with nearly 150,000.
There's just nowhere in Nevada to find that college experience. Maryland Parkway's economy is barely afloat, thanks to a bad neighborhood, a lack of support from UNLV's administration and a forsaking of architectural imagination in favor of strip malls. Virginia Street at UNR has at most four bars before trailing off into the sleaze of downtown Reno.
Nevada needs to graduate to having a third college. Save a dying community and create a true college town.
Nick Christensen is a local writer. His comments appear periodically in the Weekly.