Reviews & Comments
Tuscaloosa, AL
Avoid the Tuscaloosa Trap -
3/2/2022This is the deal with Tuscaloosa. If you have strong family support that will keep you on track, you may be okay. Alabama has too many broken, uneducated, poor families. A lot of these people live in small towns; towns that don't have jobs. A lot of these people have the intention to come here to attain a higher education, and work while doing so. But a simple economics class would show the situation becomes an employers' market. Housing is already affected by an influx of UA students. So many workers, wages are too low for the expense of living and going to college.
Only when you move away from here and observe other places and states do you realize how bad the situation is. Other states do a better job of having jobs in small towns. Other cities encourage people to become educated. Other places are aware that people may come from less than idea situations. The UA isn't the best place for students to go if you need to work a job. And the one community college in town sets a high hurdle. You realize this when you leave and see other community colleges that you are able to attain a couple of subjects for less than $600.
Tuscaloosa still works on the good old boy system. Alabama claims to be a big Republican state; up by the bootstraps and work-hard ethic. But they take money/jobs/benefits from large corporations and the federal government at the higher levels, then piece it out to the lower levels, family and friend first. Most of what you will get is because you know someone, black or white. And people down here think this is okay and normal.
All of this becomes a recycle of the same problem: Single parents, divorces, low wage workers, violence. In the last five years, I have known three young men to get shot, one died. If you are white or isolate yourself to just the University, none of this will probably affect you. If you are an outsider and come here before you secure a job, being white probably will not save you. It's not that other places do not suffer the same social problems; it's that Tuscaloosa only cares about having a lot of workers to sustain low wages. It's how the chosen are given funds for their business and cruise through life while paying their workers a wage they can not live on.