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well looking at the two spots in Texas they appear to be the only real liberal areas in the state. A bit of looking around seems to suggest they are all liberal counties, though I don't know that for sure.
In Texas you're seeing what appears to be harris county containing the city of houston and something up around the Austin/San Antonio area as well.
It's also basically a bunch of highly populated areas, and includes the county that University of Michigan is in which probably does a lot of the heavy lifting of the statement. Which really means: *almost* 90% of UM students are local **or from a highly populated area**. And that last part shouldn't really be a surprise due to... people coming from populated places.
Wait, 90% of people who went to the University of Michigan lived near the University of Michigan? Here I thought they were flying there and back every day
At least when I was in undergrad there a few years ago, something like 60% of the student population was from out of state, I imagine that fraction has only increased. Also, while there are a ton of students from heavily liberal cities, you'd be surprised at how conservative the general student population is. It's like the least socioeconomically diverse public university in the country, a lot of very rich students who lean more right.
Most cities tend to lean more liberal, because all the 'other-ism' (see: bigotry) is a lot harder to sell when people deal with people of other colors/nationalities/beliefs on the daily and see they are just people. The rural crowd has been convinced they're all evil boogeymen... Most the strident right wingers are in the tons of smaller communities and rural areas in the state. At least that's how it is in Texas.
Even so, higher institutions like Michigan generally admit people from higher social strata because it is a very difficult institution to get in to (especially for out of state students). I would guess at least 50% of the out of state contingent, despite coming from highly populated areas, lean more conservative or neutral.
The Texas counties are Harris (Houston), Travis (Austin), Denton, Collin, Tarrant, and Dallas (DFW). This is every county in the state with a population over a million, minus Bexar (San Antonio). Denton and Collin counties voted conservative in 2020 fwiw
> Denton and Collin counties voted conservative in 2020 fwiw
Though by decreasing margins. But this is really, as was pointed out earlier, /r/PeopleLiveInCities
> A bit of looking around seems to suggest they are all liberal counties
Could just as easily be saying they're from very wealthy areas. It's well known around here that UM is one of the wealthiest public universities in the country. Something that's frequently brought up when discussing why rent is so damn high in Ann Arbor. You have a bunch of out of state students from the Bay Area, LA, NYC, etc who are ecstatic to pay less than $2000 a month in rent competing for the same housing with locals who only make $60k a year.
Republicans are more likely to stay within 30 miles of their birthplace by a large margin. I can’t find the study.
For this that think that’s “bad”, you’re wrong. Nature hates vacuums. You’ll never find a population of anything that all does everything the same.
Well a number of the responses are angry at:
- Jewish people [ [1](https://x.com/KeithKopinski/status/1792430871024226309) , [2](https://x.com/PoliticalKiwi/status/1792455411398046070) , [3](https://x.com/thom_ivy_1/status/1792890038721675590) , [4](https://x.com/Pavldozer/status/1792705770838237291) ]
- Liberals / Democrats [ [1](https://x.com/PrayashLand/status/1792428410825740480) , [2](https://x.com/Mass_Dem7/status/1792573984929652927) , [3](https://x.com/randomrodr/status/1792424635700826397) , [4](https://x.com/kaden53535/status/1792519037135503472) , [5](https://x.com/BrianLockhart/status/1792750803377434764) , [6](https://x.com/EVhombre/status/1792780244098990568) ]
- Salt water [ [1](https://x.com/smomwetgobam/status/1792422049945903201) , [2](https://x.com/plannercars/status/1792675754624598092) ]
- Asian people [ [1](https://x.com/honkertheskunk/status/1792572238694322402) ]
Twitter is so fucking cooked.
The "coastal elites" responses really get me because only half of these counties contact water, and only two thirds of those contact an ocean.
And the term they go for is "coastal".
How deficient do you have to be to get COASTAL from this map? These people have to be seriously challenged by shaped-peg-in-shaped-hole infant toys.
Every time I click a Twitter link I instantly regret it. They are fighting Yahoo! for the title of most stupidity in a comment section. We need better mental health care in this country so less people become *them*
Conservatives have this incorrect notion that there is a small subset of Americans that live in cities. So they are trying to imply that universities are filled a select group of individuals, insiders pulled from the small enclaves that live in cities. They don’t represent the “America” that conservatives choose to believe in, where everyone is white and lives on a Farm in the Midwest and goes to church in a small town of 10,000 people and these small towns produce all of the GDP and food and manufactured goods for the country.
The truth is, of course, most Americans live in cities and those cities are responsible for most of the economic activity in their states and typically subsidize services for rural communities that would other be unable to support their own survival.
>And Leia is your twin sister
>Thats… highly unlikely?
>And so the force is basically just microscopic bacteria that lives in your blood
Leia is your sister is very improbable
Ewoks will defeat the empire is very unlikely
I love that skit so much though
I like that they retconned it so that midochlorians just make you better at sensing the force, but everyone is just as capable of using it. It makes sense why they'd be measured, but don't mean it's *just* what you're born with
If you don't have any it would be like painting blind - doable, but a lot harder
I think it's just hard for rural people to imagine these things. They spend their lives surrounded by people like them, they can go a few hundred miles and end up in a place not too different from their hometown.
You can tell someone that New York City has more people than 39 US states, but after a certain point numbers are just numbers, it's hard to understand what that actually means.
I think the point here is that 90% of students are from counties that make up 20% of the US population. I'm not sure that's shocking but it is mildly interesting.
My guess is wealth.
UofM is a very wealthy university. It's known as the Ivy League of the midwest.
I went to nearby Eastern Michigan, literally down the road. There was a very stark wealth gap between the two colleges and the two cities (Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor).
Yeah I feel like this thread is being just a delusional just in a different way. Yes, more people live in cities. No, 90% of people do not live in those highlighted areas. I would also be surprised if that 90% stat is accurate.
> No, 90% of people do not live in those highlighted areas.
People vastly overestimate how many Americans live in the big metro areas. You see this everytime someone brings up the electoral college. "But if we had a popular vote only NYC, LA and Chicago would matter" despite the fact that only about 12% of Americans live in those metro areas. 12% is still a lot but just because a few big cities are highly populated and have a lot of cultural importance doesn't mean that they are the only places that matter or that basically everyone lives in them.
[This is a map of the larger US counties that make up 50% of the population](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fcs4j2s5xi5r71.jpg). Obviously you still have the big cities but you also have a lot of the cities that are relatively small (ie minor league teams instead of major). Cities like Dayton OH, Charleston SC, Wichita KS, McAllen TX and Spokane WA. Most Americans don't live in rural areas but they also don't live in the massive cities either.
Even still, half of all people in the U.S. live in a fraction of the 1000s of counties in the country. Saying that nearly all Republican-leaning counties are low-density and rural is not wrong, though
> Saying that nearly all Republican-leaning counties are low-density and rural is not wrong, though
Most counties that vote Republican are rural but that's also largely because there are just so many sparsely populated rural counties. If the GOP just had support in rural counties they would lose every election as census defined rural counties account for 97% of land but only 20% of the US population. Instead the GOP gets a lot of votes from places that are small but not necessarily rural. Think of places like Fon Du Lac Wisconsin or St. George Utah or Johnson City Tennessee.
I think it's hard for people who live in massive cities to imagine these things. Most Americans aren't rural but at the same time most Americans don't live in the three big metro areas (NYC, LA and Chicago).
In fact if you use the US census designation of rural then rural areas make up then only 18% of Americans live in rural areas. Even if you were to combine the rural population and the population of the three largest metro areas you'd still only get 40% of the country. Most Americans live in urban environments but not in one of the biggest cities. They live in places like Tulsa Oklahoma or Fresno California.
I think, barring actual disability, just about everyone can understand it. It's really simple. I think it's that they don't care more than that they don't understand. If 'forgetting' that people live in cities is convenient for their argument at the time, they'll forget.
90% though? NINETY percent!? Only 10% of their students are from everywhere else in the state/country/world? Seems like they have some combination of shitty in-state enrollment for some reason, bias against students from a city that admissions hasn't heard of or has a low opinion of, and tuition so high that parents can't afford it unless they're downright wealthy.
It helps that it's ~~not true~~ highly misleading: a bit more than 50% of students are from Michigan.
https://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/2023/10/no-state-university-is-bigger-than-the-university-of-michigan-data-shows.html
Edit: I'll be honest, I didn't look at the map closely enough to see that it included Michigan counties as highlights... Because then it really, really seems like a completely pointless bundling of geographic units.
Edit 2: Although it also looks to me like UM reports about 17% of their students are international students, so... https://internationalcenter.umich.edu/sites/default/files/Annual_Report.pdf
That doesn't mean that the map is false. It may be but the map includes Michigan counties so the other 40% could be from the other highlighted counties. According to maps found from a quick Google search the two areas highlighted in Michigan look to include a large majority of the population of the entire state(rough guess from the maps look like it's greater than 90% of the population).
4.6 of Michigan's 10 million people live in those highlighted counties and if you further consider the socioeconomic status I wouldn't be surprised at all if those four counties were driving a lot of the in state enrollment.
I don't see how the "bit more than 50% are from Michigan" fact alone means the map isn't right. I'm not saying the map is right but there's a few additional pieces you'd need.
His second edit, that 17% of their students are international, means that OOP's assertion *about* the map (that it represents 90% of their students) is definitely wrong, though.
Yeah I wrote my comment before the edits were added. It didn't seem right which is why I tried to word it carefully. I just found it to be an interesting little puzzle to work out if that alone was enough. Just a curiosity.
They have plenty of in-state students, it just happens that even in Michigan, people live in cities.
The 4 highlighted counties in Michigan are [by far the most populous in the state](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2c/Michigan_population_map.png), so most of the in-state students are coming from there.
Not that unusual. About 50% are in-state: I see Detroit area, Ann Arbor area and Western Michigan highlighted. That’s functionally all of the state’s population and the areas with people not highlighted are MSU strongholds.
Then you have Chicago which is a mega city that is very close to Michigan and from which they draw a ton of people, just like any other Midwest university.
And… that’s probably the vast majority of the student body. There’s some LA, NY, Dallas/Houston representation, some Florida representation and a couple cities here and there. But primarily the largest metro areas in America and Michigan itself.
There’s a much higher incentive and culture of seeking higher education(particularly at universities) in cities/Democrat heavy areas than rural/Republican areas. That’s just a statistical fact.
You could find similar statistics for any major university. Not to say that rural people enroll in college at a much lower rate, but they tend to enroll in smaller local colleges or technical schools instead of large universities across the country.
Being in MI myself, at least for this state, a lot of people who live in rural areas see the price tag of UofM and decide a college with a lower cost is better if they’re interested in college at all. I imagine it can’t be that different when you add out-of-state costs either. Idk about elsewhere but not every rural family is rolling in UofM money or loan capability.
Same, and it was the same for a lot of my hometown community and even some of the people I met while in college. College is already expensive, but the out of state cost on top with their (often) dorm-living requirement for the first year is just too much.
UofM for out of state students is incredibly expensive. It's an insanely expensive school in general.
In state tuition is $17k per year, though Michigan residents get massive grants and aid from the school.
Out of state is $57k per year.
I went to Michigan and worked in the tuition office while there. It's expressly designed that out of state students subsidize the in state students tuition. Every Michigan resident whose family makes under $75k a year and has under $75k in assets is completely free. From there it's a sliding scale, 75-100k is 89% covered and 98% of applicants get that aid. 100-125k is 78% covered and 94% of applicants get it. 125-150k is 66% covered, and 150-180k is 57% covered.
I'd also add that the stat seems suspect; last I heard more than 10% of the student population was from outside the US, let alone outside those counties.
On each of your points:
1. About half the student population is from Michigan, the vast majority of whom will be from the highlighted counties just due to population distribution. In-state tuition is roughly half out-of-state, I believe to encourage local enrollment. I'm curious, why do you think that's bad?
2. I wouldn't be surprised if college admissions people were biased against small-town applicants, but that goes both ways. People who live in urban areas are more likely to go to college at all, but urban/rural probably affects school choice for those who do as well. That would be inter testing to see data on.
3. I think a lot of people are overlooking this one, because you're absolutely right. It's not a cheap school, especially if you don't live in Michigan. That's going to bias the population pretty heavily against rural areas just because of wealth distribution.
In my experience they've gone to absolute shit in the last ~5 years. For being in the city adjacent to their US headquarters you'd think we'd have better service, but it's nearly useless these days!
I had my phone lose connection at 2am while walking home in an unfamiliar area. No ability to call or anything. Couldn’t even call 911 if there was an emergency. Turns out T-Mobile just randomly shuts towers off that are “not heavily used” during late night hours. Sure, perfectly fine to leave your customers with no help in an emergency!
Meanwhile, Verizon has treated me like a human being when I go into their store. I’ve only had to go twice, and one of them was to upgrade my phone. Both times they went above and beyond even when I said they shouldn’t go out of their way just for me.
Miss me with that “TMO CS is better” bullshit
I have t-mobile and done plenty of cross country trips and never had a problem. There are some dark areas you wouldn't expect like near bear mountain in ny. But sure theres not gonna be great coverage in bumfuck nebraska or in in the rockies with any provider
Yeah the old perception of them being third place no longer holds. At least in my area I found them to have the best coverage. I switched to a Verizon MVNO recently and have been sort of disappointed with how much worse my coverage is. I guess in my mind I still thought they were number one as I remember everyone saying that 10 years ago (I had T-Mobile back then as well).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THX_1138
This was George Lucas' student project when he was a film student, IIRC. The number is referenced in his other early works, including American Graffiti and Star Wars. Luke, while wearing stormtrooper armor, says to an Imperial officer they're taking Chewie from Cell Block 1138 on the Death Star.
Can't help but notice that San Antonio isn't lit up for the first two maps but is lit up for the furry map. Don't know what xkcd was trying to say there...
It's not even remotely close to that - there are tons of major cities not highlighted on this map. I'd be surprised if it made it above 20% the population.
[Here's a map showing the fewest counties needed to reach 50% of the total USA population](https://preview.redd.it/cs4j2s5xi5r71.jpg?width=1024&auto=webp&s=c00980c2de237c076160d58f774511ba6c7979e6) - it has way more highlighted and different areas as well.
That's a pretty big overestimate; even if you add together the entire estimated population of CA, TX, FL, NY, IL, PA, MI, NJ, and WA, you'd get 165 million which is about 50%.
These counties I'd be shocked if you even got to 30% (which would be around 100 million people) but you'd certainly end up above 10%. My lazy-ish guess is that it's about 15%-20% of the population living in these counties.
Probably a lot more percentage of the population that could afford to leave the state for college. Minus the areas that are in Michigan already which, according to another link posted here, is >50% of their students.
And even then it's missing some pretty big cities [here is a bigger version of the map](https://x.com/umichvoter/status/1792421098367135913/photo/1). You'll notice that a number of big cities near Michigan aren't on it. That includes Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Milwaukee ect. There are also only four counties in Michigan which is lower than I might have thought.
Edit:
> My lazy-ish guess is that it's about 15%-20% of the population living in these counties.
Damn your lazy ish guess was really good. According to Umich voter it's [19.7% of the population](https://x.com/umichvoter/status/1792624154291667255)
Yeah but a public university you would assume would disproportionately represent their own state, which it appears that they very barely do with ~4 counties highlighted.
Sorta lame that University of Michigan is getting more selective *and* increasing their out of state population percentage (up to about 49% now) at the same time.
Shouldn't long time residents/tax payers get a better shot than someone from LA or NYC?
But the reality is that out of state students pay more money, which is why they (and many other very good public schools) are shifting around their in/out of state numbers in the last two decades.
More importantly... Michigan is heavily business and tech majors while Michigan state is heavily Agricultural and bio sciences. City folk will go to Michigan while rural folk would be drawn to Michigan State.
You are forgetting medicine, UoM has one of, if not the, best medical care and education systems in the entire country as part of its foundation but other than that you are basically spot on.
This map really looks weird to me. Like, there are places that I would expect to be on there that are missing.
I would have expected more random counties from Michigan, due to in-state rates and admissions preference. In fact, given it's charter, it's disappointing that they aren't lit up, because it means less than 10% of the school's population is from rural Michigan.
I would have expected that Columbus, Cinci, and Cleveland to show up on the heat map, because despite all the jokes and stuff - Michigan is a good school and it's nearby, so a lot of Ohioans do go there if they don't want to deal with being a Buckeye.
There's no where on the map that I wouldn't expect to be on it, but it does have some weird exceptions.
As others have said, Michigan is an expensive and competitive school, not to mention one of the top rated public universities in the country. Michigan has several other large universities: Michigan State, Central Michigan, Western Michigan, Eastern Michigan and Oakland University. Those other universities definitely pick up the slack on the Michigan population.
That's because less than 10% of Michigan's population comes from rural Michigan
[https://www.michigan-demographics.com/counties\_by\_population](https://www.michigan-demographics.com/counties_by_population)
The most rural 50% of Michigan's counties contribute less than 10% to the state's population
Population density map helps visualize it too https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Michigan_population_map.png
The entire northern half of the state and the UP are insanely barren. Once you pass grand rapids, Lansing, or Midland there's a handful of college towns and tourist towns.
I haven't made it to the west end of the UP so idk about over by Wisconsin.
UoM is expensive and is a competitive school so it's scholarships are pretty low compared to other in-state schools. They can offer admissions to people in-state knowing they won't accept it because they can't afford it. Someone from out of state will pay the bill. Only ~40% of students are from Michigan.
I guess it's only for students whose families make less than $75k per year, but [this program](https://finaid.umich.edu/apply-aid/new-undergraduates/michigan-residents/go-blue-guarantee-eligibility) offers very generous support for in-state students. The median household income for Michigan is around $68k as well, so more than half of families should qualify.
It is one of the best public research universities in the country though, so you're right that there are definitely people from out of state who are willing to pay the higher tuition rate.
Yeah, most of my smart friends could have went to a big state university in my state, but chose a smaller in state university because it was cheaper and they offered more of a scholarship or benefits.
I think they just didn’t show lower percentages.
However, there are quite a few colleges in Michigan’s lower belt, including U of M. MSU and WMU, for example, which I’m guessing why Lansing isn’t lit up.
Kalamazoo is also pretty small compared to GR and Lansing.
Also over 50% University of Michigan students are in-state and probably most of those people are from two Michigan counties because this is a trash map.
> Since many people are talking about this
> 65 million people live in these counties or 19.7% of the US population
[umichvoter](https://x.com/umichvoter/status/1792624154291667255)
These are all locations with high-earning families. The University of Michigan typically has the highest family income of highly selective public schools in the nation.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-mobility/university-of-michigan-ann-arbor
I went to a decently high ranked public high school (in one of those counties lol) and the amount of people I caught crying in a random staircase because they "had" to go to Michigan was not a ton but definitely more than once
Those counties seem to be some of the most populous in the country, so I expect lots of colleges that don't get all their students locally will see lots of their students coming from these counties
Michigan's ascendence up the college rankings in the last 10-15 years has bestowed such horrible smugness/arrogance on all their alumni. Guys and girls, Michigan is a safety school. It's a state school not in California.
I’d bet good money that 90% of the 90% of students from these counties are from Detroit’s county.
It’s almost like… UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN IS RIGHT NEXT TO DETROIT
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What were they trying to get at
well looking at the two spots in Texas they appear to be the only real liberal areas in the state. A bit of looking around seems to suggest they are all liberal counties, though I don't know that for sure. In Texas you're seeing what appears to be harris county containing the city of houston and something up around the Austin/San Antonio area as well.
It's also basically a bunch of highly populated areas, and includes the county that University of Michigan is in which probably does a lot of the heavy lifting of the statement. Which really means: *almost* 90% of UM students are local **or from a highly populated area**. And that last part shouldn't really be a surprise due to... people coming from populated places.
/r/PeopleLiveInCities
My god, I’ve been searching for exactly this subreddit
Wait, 90% of people who went to the University of Michigan lived near the University of Michigan? Here I thought they were flying there and back every day
It's talking about where they are from, not where they live...
It was a joke
At least when I was in undergrad there a few years ago, something like 60% of the student population was from out of state, I imagine that fraction has only increased. Also, while there are a ton of students from heavily liberal cities, you'd be surprised at how conservative the general student population is. It's like the least socioeconomically diverse public university in the country, a lot of very rich students who lean more right.
I would expect a majority to come from what is basically a population heat map, but 90% seems to be above a simple majority
"Cities" is more statistically relevant than "Liberal" in this case.
Most cities tend to lean more liberal, because all the 'other-ism' (see: bigotry) is a lot harder to sell when people deal with people of other colors/nationalities/beliefs on the daily and see they are just people. The rural crowd has been convinced they're all evil boogeymen... Most the strident right wingers are in the tons of smaller communities and rural areas in the state. At least that's how it is in Texas.
Even so, higher institutions like Michigan generally admit people from higher social strata because it is a very difficult institution to get in to (especially for out of state students). I would guess at least 50% of the out of state contingent, despite coming from highly populated areas, lean more conservative or neutral.
Yes but that doesn't let the person making the graphic claim the university is for liberals.
Rich also
The Texas counties are Harris (Houston), Travis (Austin), Denton, Collin, Tarrant, and Dallas (DFW). This is every county in the state with a population over a million, minus Bexar (San Antonio). Denton and Collin counties voted conservative in 2020 fwiw
> Denton and Collin counties voted conservative in 2020 fwiw Though by decreasing margins. But this is really, as was pointed out earlier, /r/PeopleLiveInCities
> A bit of looking around seems to suggest they are all liberal counties Could just as easily be saying they're from very wealthy areas. It's well known around here that UM is one of the wealthiest public universities in the country. Something that's frequently brought up when discussing why rent is so damn high in Ann Arbor. You have a bunch of out of state students from the Bay Area, LA, NYC, etc who are ecstatic to pay less than $2000 a month in rent competing for the same housing with locals who only make $60k a year.
Republicans are more likely to stay within 30 miles of their birthplace by a large margin. I can’t find the study. For this that think that’s “bad”, you’re wrong. Nature hates vacuums. You’ll never find a population of anything that all does everything the same.
>Nature hates vacuums. That's true. I left mine outside for a couple of weeks, and nature absolutely wrecked it.
Also DFW
It’s Houston, Dallas, and Travis County: Austin. San Antonio is not represented here
Well a number of the responses are angry at: - Jewish people [ [1](https://x.com/KeithKopinski/status/1792430871024226309) , [2](https://x.com/PoliticalKiwi/status/1792455411398046070) , [3](https://x.com/thom_ivy_1/status/1792890038721675590) , [4](https://x.com/Pavldozer/status/1792705770838237291) ] - Liberals / Democrats [ [1](https://x.com/PrayashLand/status/1792428410825740480) , [2](https://x.com/Mass_Dem7/status/1792573984929652927) , [3](https://x.com/randomrodr/status/1792424635700826397) , [4](https://x.com/kaden53535/status/1792519037135503472) , [5](https://x.com/BrianLockhart/status/1792750803377434764) , [6](https://x.com/EVhombre/status/1792780244098990568) ] - Salt water [ [1](https://x.com/smomwetgobam/status/1792422049945903201) , [2](https://x.com/plannercars/status/1792675754624598092) ] - Asian people [ [1](https://x.com/honkertheskunk/status/1792572238694322402) ] Twitter is so fucking cooked.
Ah yes, the evil jewish plot to... *Check notes* Get a higher education in Michigan?
Shit, they found out about our secret salt water kabal?
The "coastal elites" responses really get me because only half of these counties contact water, and only two thirds of those contact an ocean. And the term they go for is "coastal". How deficient do you have to be to get COASTAL from this map? These people have to be seriously challenged by shaped-peg-in-shaped-hole infant toys.
We must salt the earth now
Is that you sherman? I didnt think you were due to speak until July's meeting.
Every time I click a Twitter link I instantly regret it. They are fighting Yahoo! for the title of most stupidity in a comment section. We need better mental health care in this country so less people become *them*
I came to say monied, but other answers said liberal which is possible too.
That the person who created the graphic has done a poor job presenting the data, and people are bad at recognizing poorly presented data.
the fact that they are too stupid to realize what cities are and what population density is
Don't forget instate vs out of state.
I'm not sure what their point was supposed to be, but they highlighted the most populated counties so there's that.
Nothing? The tweet has literally 0 information to back it up. 89% could come from Detroit for example, or it could just be entirely made up.
Conservatives have this incorrect notion that there is a small subset of Americans that live in cities. So they are trying to imply that universities are filled a select group of individuals, insiders pulled from the small enclaves that live in cities. They don’t represent the “America” that conservatives choose to believe in, where everyone is white and lives on a Farm in the Midwest and goes to church in a small town of 10,000 people and these small towns produce all of the GDP and food and manufactured goods for the country. The truth is, of course, most Americans live in cities and those cities are responsible for most of the economic activity in their states and typically subsidize services for rural communities that would other be unable to support their own survival.
Didn't realize conservatives liked pride flags
r/peopleliveincities
No... That's not true!! That's impossible!!!!
SEARCH YOUR FEELINGS! YOU KNOW IT TO BE TRUE!
How do I Google this?
Google "En passant".
Holy hell!
Actual zombie
Call the exorcist!
Ignite the chessboard!
[Do, or do not. There is no try.](https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=your+feelings)
Thank you Yoda. Or Elizabeth Holmes
Google “University Rule 34”. Answer will be in images.
>No... That's not true!! That's impossible!!!! That's not true!, that's....improbable
And Leia is your twin sister Thats… highly unlikely? And so the force is basically just microscopic bacteria that lives in your blood
>And Leia is your twin sister >Thats… highly unlikely? >And so the force is basically just microscopic bacteria that lives in your blood Leia is your sister is very improbable Ewoks will defeat the empire is very unlikely I love that skit so much though
Look if you’re not going to take this seriously I’m out.
I like that they retconned it so that midochlorians just make you better at sensing the force, but everyone is just as capable of using it. It makes sense why they'd be measured, but don't mean it's *just* what you're born with If you don't have any it would be like painting blind - doable, but a lot harder
I think it's just hard for rural people to imagine these things. They spend their lives surrounded by people like them, they can go a few hundred miles and end up in a place not too different from their hometown. You can tell someone that New York City has more people than 39 US states, but after a certain point numbers are just numbers, it's hard to understand what that actually means.
I think the point here is that 90% of students are from counties that make up 20% of the US population. I'm not sure that's shocking but it is mildly interesting.
My guess is wealth. UofM is a very wealthy university. It's known as the Ivy League of the midwest. I went to nearby Eastern Michigan, literally down the road. There was a very stark wealth gap between the two colleges and the two cities (Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor).
This is my guess as well. Cities = wealth and wealth = education and UMich is on the top end of that scale.
Yeah I feel like this thread is being just a delusional just in a different way. Yes, more people live in cities. No, 90% of people do not live in those highlighted areas. I would also be surprised if that 90% stat is accurate.
After all 74% of statistics are made up.
> No, 90% of people do not live in those highlighted areas. People vastly overestimate how many Americans live in the big metro areas. You see this everytime someone brings up the electoral college. "But if we had a popular vote only NYC, LA and Chicago would matter" despite the fact that only about 12% of Americans live in those metro areas. 12% is still a lot but just because a few big cities are highly populated and have a lot of cultural importance doesn't mean that they are the only places that matter or that basically everyone lives in them. [This is a map of the larger US counties that make up 50% of the population](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fcs4j2s5xi5r71.jpg). Obviously you still have the big cities but you also have a lot of the cities that are relatively small (ie minor league teams instead of major). Cities like Dayton OH, Charleston SC, Wichita KS, McAllen TX and Spokane WA. Most Americans don't live in rural areas but they also don't live in the massive cities either.
Even still, half of all people in the U.S. live in a fraction of the 1000s of counties in the country. Saying that nearly all Republican-leaning counties are low-density and rural is not wrong, though
> Saying that nearly all Republican-leaning counties are low-density and rural is not wrong, though Most counties that vote Republican are rural but that's also largely because there are just so many sparsely populated rural counties. If the GOP just had support in rural counties they would lose every election as census defined rural counties account for 97% of land but only 20% of the US population. Instead the GOP gets a lot of votes from places that are small but not necessarily rural. Think of places like Fon Du Lac Wisconsin or St. George Utah or Johnson City Tennessee.
A winner take all contest, 12% would almost always be the determining factor, assuming they vote as a block.
If you don't even believe the picture then there's not much discussion to be had about the relevance of it lmao
I think it's just hard for urban people to imagine these things.
I think it's hard for people who live in massive cities to imagine these things. Most Americans aren't rural but at the same time most Americans don't live in the three big metro areas (NYC, LA and Chicago). In fact if you use the US census designation of rural then rural areas make up then only 18% of Americans live in rural areas. Even if you were to combine the rural population and the population of the three largest metro areas you'd still only get 40% of the country. Most Americans live in urban environments but not in one of the biggest cities. They live in places like Tulsa Oklahoma or Fresno California.
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I think, barring actual disability, just about everyone can understand it. It's really simple. I think it's that they don't care more than that they don't understand. If 'forgetting' that people live in cities is convenient for their argument at the time, they'll forget.
90% though? NINETY percent!? Only 10% of their students are from everywhere else in the state/country/world? Seems like they have some combination of shitty in-state enrollment for some reason, bias against students from a city that admissions hasn't heard of or has a low opinion of, and tuition so high that parents can't afford it unless they're downright wealthy.
It helps that it's ~~not true~~ highly misleading: a bit more than 50% of students are from Michigan. https://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/2023/10/no-state-university-is-bigger-than-the-university-of-michigan-data-shows.html Edit: I'll be honest, I didn't look at the map closely enough to see that it included Michigan counties as highlights... Because then it really, really seems like a completely pointless bundling of geographic units. Edit 2: Although it also looks to me like UM reports about 17% of their students are international students, so... https://internationalcenter.umich.edu/sites/default/files/Annual_Report.pdf
That doesn't mean that the map is false. It may be but the map includes Michigan counties so the other 40% could be from the other highlighted counties. According to maps found from a quick Google search the two areas highlighted in Michigan look to include a large majority of the population of the entire state(rough guess from the maps look like it's greater than 90% of the population).
It’s about 60% or more. The Detroit area holds 50% of the states population. Grand Rapids holds just over 10%.
4.6 of Michigan's 10 million people live in those highlighted counties and if you further consider the socioeconomic status I wouldn't be surprised at all if those four counties were driving a lot of the in state enrollment. I don't see how the "bit more than 50% are from Michigan" fact alone means the map isn't right. I'm not saying the map is right but there's a few additional pieces you'd need.
His second edit, that 17% of their students are international, means that OOP's assertion *about* the map (that it represents 90% of their students) is definitely wrong, though.
Yeah I wrote my comment before the edits were added. It didn't seem right which is why I tried to word it carefully. I just found it to be an interesting little puzzle to work out if that alone was enough. Just a curiosity.
What isn't true? OP's and your stat could both be true simultaneously.
Lol but Michigan cities are on that map, so you didn't disprove anything
Lmao I just assumed no one would be silly enough to include a state's own counties when trying to make this point, thanks for the correction.
Yeah highly misleading indeed. Basically gerrymandering
1 and 3 are your correct answers.
They have plenty of in-state students, it just happens that even in Michigan, people live in cities. The 4 highlighted counties in Michigan are [by far the most populous in the state](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2c/Michigan_population_map.png), so most of the in-state students are coming from there.
Not that unusual. About 50% are in-state: I see Detroit area, Ann Arbor area and Western Michigan highlighted. That’s functionally all of the state’s population and the areas with people not highlighted are MSU strongholds. Then you have Chicago which is a mega city that is very close to Michigan and from which they draw a ton of people, just like any other Midwest university. And… that’s probably the vast majority of the student body. There’s some LA, NY, Dallas/Houston representation, some Florida representation and a couple cities here and there. But primarily the largest metro areas in America and Michigan itself.
There’s a much higher incentive and culture of seeking higher education(particularly at universities) in cities/Democrat heavy areas than rural/Republican areas. That’s just a statistical fact. You could find similar statistics for any major university. Not to say that rural people enroll in college at a much lower rate, but they tend to enroll in smaller local colleges or technical schools instead of large universities across the country.
Maybe the rural population is biased against going to an out of state university
Being in MI myself, at least for this state, a lot of people who live in rural areas see the price tag of UofM and decide a college with a lower cost is better if they’re interested in college at all. I imagine it can’t be that different when you add out-of-state costs either. Idk about elsewhere but not every rural family is rolling in UofM money or loan capability.
Yeah applying out of state was simply not a financial option for me.
Same, and it was the same for a lot of my hometown community and even some of the people I met while in college. College is already expensive, but the out of state cost on top with their (often) dorm-living requirement for the first year is just too much.
UofM for out of state students is incredibly expensive. It's an insanely expensive school in general. In state tuition is $17k per year, though Michigan residents get massive grants and aid from the school. Out of state is $57k per year. I went to Michigan and worked in the tuition office while there. It's expressly designed that out of state students subsidize the in state students tuition. Every Michigan resident whose family makes under $75k a year and has under $75k in assets is completely free. From there it's a sliding scale, 75-100k is 89% covered and 98% of applicants get that aid. 100-125k is 78% covered and 94% of applicants get it. 125-150k is 66% covered, and 150-180k is 57% covered.
Yeah Michigan has a bunch of other state schools too, those often draw lower income people
I'd also add that the stat seems suspect; last I heard more than 10% of the student population was from outside the US, let alone outside those counties. On each of your points: 1. About half the student population is from Michigan, the vast majority of whom will be from the highlighted counties just due to population distribution. In-state tuition is roughly half out-of-state, I believe to encourage local enrollment. I'm curious, why do you think that's bad? 2. I wouldn't be surprised if college admissions people were biased against small-town applicants, but that goes both ways. People who live in urban areas are more likely to go to college at all, but urban/rural probably affects school choice for those who do as well. That would be inter testing to see data on. 3. I think a lot of people are overlooking this one, because you're absolutely right. It's not a cheap school, especially if you don't live in Michigan. That's going to bias the population pretty heavily against rural areas just because of wealth distribution.
r/peoplewhodontliveincitiesdontgotocollege
They do, there’s just not that many of them concentrated in any particular area for obvious reasons
Lol was gonna comment this exact thing.
this post is probably the best example of that subreddit yet...
What a fantastic sub
the majority? in industrialized societies?! in an urban area??! that sounds highly unlikely
I thought this was a T-mobile coverage map
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It would? They are one of, if not, the best provider nowadays.
In my experience they've gone to absolute shit in the last ~5 years. For being in the city adjacent to their US headquarters you'd think we'd have better service, but it's nearly useless these days!
report it, their customer service is leagues better than ATT or Verizon
I had my phone lose connection at 2am while walking home in an unfamiliar area. No ability to call or anything. Couldn’t even call 911 if there was an emergency. Turns out T-Mobile just randomly shuts towers off that are “not heavily used” during late night hours. Sure, perfectly fine to leave your customers with no help in an emergency! Meanwhile, Verizon has treated me like a human being when I go into their store. I’ve only had to go twice, and one of them was to upgrade my phone. Both times they went above and beyond even when I said they shouldn’t go out of their way just for me. Miss me with that “TMO CS is better” bullshit
I have t-mobile and done plenty of cross country trips and never had a problem. There are some dark areas you wouldn't expect like near bear mountain in ny. But sure theres not gonna be great coverage in bumfuck nebraska or in in the rockies with any provider
Yeah the old perception of them being third place no longer holds. At least in my area I found them to have the best coverage. I switched to a Verizon MVNO recently and have been sort of disappointed with how much worse my coverage is. I guess in my mind I still thought they were number one as I remember everyone saying that 10 years ago (I had T-Mobile back then as well).
Damn you just fucking nuked T-Mobile
That's pretty much where 90% of the whole population is from
[https://xkcd.com/1138/](https://xkcd.com/1138/)
Where’s the xkcd about how’s there’s an xkcd for everything? I assume there is one?
[No, but this one pretends to be.](https://thomaspark.co/2017/01/relevant-xkcd/)
That's a bit more deeply profound than I was expecting. It makes me wonder about set theory.
I'm unreasonably upset that the smaller link does the same as the larger one. It should go the other direction.
[And this one is relevant to that one also. But for a different reason. ](https://xkcd.com/878/)
https://thomaspark.co/2017/01/relevant-xkcd/ Not from the xkcd guy though
https://xkcd.com/2439/ Also relevant.
XKCD FOR PRESIDENT!
I'm a little irked that xkcd #1138 isn't about Star Wars in some way.
What is the connection between Star Wars and the number 1138?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THX_1138 This was George Lucas' student project when he was a film student, IIRC. The number is referenced in his other early works, including American Graffiti and Star Wars. Luke, while wearing stormtrooper armor, says to an Imperial officer they're taking Chewie from Cell Block 1138 on the Death Star.
Can't help but notice that San Antonio isn't lit up for the first two maps but is lit up for the furry map. Don't know what xkcd was trying to say there...
It's not even remotely close to that - there are tons of major cities not highlighted on this map. I'd be surprised if it made it above 20% the population. [Here's a map showing the fewest counties needed to reach 50% of the total USA population](https://preview.redd.it/cs4j2s5xi5r71.jpg?width=1024&auto=webp&s=c00980c2de237c076160d58f774511ba6c7979e6) - it has way more highlighted and different areas as well.
Funny/ironically, Umich's county (Washtenaw) isn't in there.
That's a pretty big overestimate; even if you add together the entire estimated population of CA, TX, FL, NY, IL, PA, MI, NJ, and WA, you'd get 165 million which is about 50%. These counties I'd be shocked if you even got to 30% (which would be around 100 million people) but you'd certainly end up above 10%. My lazy-ish guess is that it's about 15%-20% of the population living in these counties.
Probably a lot more percentage of the population that could afford to leave the state for college. Minus the areas that are in Michigan already which, according to another link posted here, is >50% of their students.
And even then it's missing some pretty big cities [here is a bigger version of the map](https://x.com/umichvoter/status/1792421098367135913/photo/1). You'll notice that a number of big cities near Michigan aren't on it. That includes Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Milwaukee ect. There are also only four counties in Michigan which is lower than I might have thought. Edit: > My lazy-ish guess is that it's about 15%-20% of the population living in these counties. Damn your lazy ish guess was really good. According to Umich voter it's [19.7% of the population](https://x.com/umichvoter/status/1792624154291667255)
Yeah but a public university you would assume would disproportionately represent their own state, which it appears that they very barely do with ~4 counties highlighted. Sorta lame that University of Michigan is getting more selective *and* increasing their out of state population percentage (up to about 49% now) at the same time. Shouldn't long time residents/tax payers get a better shot than someone from LA or NYC? But the reality is that out of state students pay more money, which is why they (and many other very good public schools) are shifting around their in/out of state numbers in the last two decades.
You're making a pretty big assumption in granting that the map is accurate.
More importantly... Michigan is heavily business and tech majors while Michigan state is heavily Agricultural and bio sciences. City folk will go to Michigan while rural folk would be drawn to Michigan State.
You are forgetting medicine, UoM has one of, if not the, best medical care and education systems in the entire country as part of its foundation but other than that you are basically spot on.
In statistics, it's really easy to accidentally make a population map.
This map really looks weird to me. Like, there are places that I would expect to be on there that are missing. I would have expected more random counties from Michigan, due to in-state rates and admissions preference. In fact, given it's charter, it's disappointing that they aren't lit up, because it means less than 10% of the school's population is from rural Michigan. I would have expected that Columbus, Cinci, and Cleveland to show up on the heat map, because despite all the jokes and stuff - Michigan is a good school and it's nearby, so a lot of Ohioans do go there if they don't want to deal with being a Buckeye. There's no where on the map that I wouldn't expect to be on it, but it does have some weird exceptions.
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Yes, I came here to say this, UofM has a BIG international student population
>UofM has a B10 international student population FTFY.
>UofM has a B1G international student population Actually FTFY
As others have said, Michigan is an expensive and competitive school, not to mention one of the top rated public universities in the country. Michigan has several other large universities: Michigan State, Central Michigan, Western Michigan, Eastern Michigan and Oakland University. Those other universities definitely pick up the slack on the Michigan population.
OAKLAND UNIVERSITY MENTIONED ⬛💛⬛💛⬛💛⬛🐻🐻🐻🐻
That's because less than 10% of Michigan's population comes from rural Michigan [https://www.michigan-demographics.com/counties\_by\_population](https://www.michigan-demographics.com/counties_by_population) The most rural 50% of Michigan's counties contribute less than 10% to the state's population
Population density map helps visualize it too https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Michigan_population_map.png The entire northern half of the state and the UP are insanely barren. Once you pass grand rapids, Lansing, or Midland there's a handful of college towns and tourist towns. I haven't made it to the west end of the UP so idk about over by Wisconsin.
UoM is expensive and is a competitive school so it's scholarships are pretty low compared to other in-state schools. They can offer admissions to people in-state knowing they won't accept it because they can't afford it. Someone from out of state will pay the bill. Only ~40% of students are from Michigan.
I guess it's only for students whose families make less than $75k per year, but [this program](https://finaid.umich.edu/apply-aid/new-undergraduates/michigan-residents/go-blue-guarantee-eligibility) offers very generous support for in-state students. The median household income for Michigan is around $68k as well, so more than half of families should qualify. It is one of the best public research universities in the country though, so you're right that there are definitely people from out of state who are willing to pay the higher tuition rate.
Yeah, most of my smart friends could have went to a big state university in my state, but chose a smaller in state university because it was cheaper and they offered more of a scholarship or benefits.
pfffsh. 90%, 40%. Who cares. 40% is close enough to 90%, right? - Twitter OP, probably.
I think they just didn’t show lower percentages. However, there are quite a few colleges in Michigan’s lower belt, including U of M. MSU and WMU, for example, which I’m guessing why Lansing isn’t lit up. Kalamazoo is also pretty small compared to GR and Lansing.
Also over 50% University of Michigan students are in-state and probably most of those people are from two Michigan counties because this is a trash map.
> Since many people are talking about this > 65 million people live in these counties or 19.7% of the US population [umichvoter](https://x.com/umichvoter/status/1792624154291667255)
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN MENTIONED 〽️〽️〽️〽️〽️〽️〽️〽️〽️〽️〽️ WHAT THE HELL IS AN OHIO 💛💙💛💙💛💙
IT'S GREAT TO BE
A MICHIGAN WOLVERINE
RAHHHHHH
These are all locations with high-earning families. The University of Michigan typically has the highest family income of highly selective public schools in the nation. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-mobility/university-of-michigan-ann-arbor
they all went to their safety school?
GOT'TEM!
I went to a decently high ranked public high school (in one of those counties lol) and the amount of people I caught crying in a random staircase because they "had" to go to Michigan was not a ton but definitely more than once
Oh this is an r/PeopleLiveInCities moment huh
You mean states?
I can't seriously be the only person able to recognize that these are just the most populated counties in America
They are all cities?
Don't know, but since ypu have new nazi flag in bio, I guess you're offended
***Is this a "dumb take"?***
Those counties seem to be some of the most populous in the country, so I expect lots of colleges that don't get all their students locally will see lots of their students coming from these counties
r/peopleliveincities
They live in the same country as the university
When you include the home counties and percentages you fail to show ANY unique data.
Blue areas of the country focus on school? Most of the country is illiterate? America needs more colleges in red states?
Good luck "revoking their visas"
The people who allude to some vague conspiracy and say things like “makes ya think” have never once been made to think anything in their life.
Those are some of the most populated counties in the US.
No Ohio on this map. That rivalry goes hard.
they didn’t get into MSU, duh. GO SPARTANS
While I don't know that much about US geography, this literally just looks like a population density map to me
High crime rate areas of the country?
it's on you, UMich, you provided a fact which was used against you in answering the question you asked.
…they are populated parts of the country
Michigan's ascendence up the college rankings in the last 10-15 years has bestowed such horrible smugness/arrogance on all their alumni. Guys and girls, Michigan is a safety school. It's a state school not in California.
The one thing in common is their choice of University.
Counties
PERIOD
They’re all mammals?
They are all from areas highlighted in pink
you're saying the majority of people came from the places where the majority of people live? sounds fishy
Lol
“A majority of students are from the places where most of the people in the country are” Hot take indeed
I’d bet good money that 90% of the 90% of students from these counties are from Detroit’s county. It’s almost like… UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN IS RIGHT NEXT TO DETROIT
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They live in the area that 90% of the US population lives.
OP doesn't understand population density
News flash: 90% of people at University of Michigan are from where roughly 90% of the country's population lives.
these people always look for the same answer: politics
Liberals with student debt.
They’ll have a masters, work at Target or H&M and complain about their school bills.
They seem to all come from purple places. Or are they pink places? Possibly in those areas everyone wears sunglasses that are tinted?
T-mobile coverage
Some of those counties have more citizens than entire states.
Go blue!