As Massachusetts' string of rainy weekends continues, businesses see unseasonal trends
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A typical spring could have five or six consecutive rainy weekends, but this unusual year has already produced 13 in a row, with a 14th very likely this week, said Globe lead meteorologist Ken Mahan.
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'You don't really make that business up,' said Chris Lohring, owner of Notch Brewing, a tap room and beer garden in Salem and Brighton that has seen its primarily outdoor business cut almost in half. 'People don't all of a sudden go out more, it's just lost.'
But driving people inside can be a benefit to other businesses.
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The recent rainy days have driven up traffic at Puttshack, an indoor miniature golf venue with locations in Boston's Seaport and Natick. Bookings during recent weekends have increased by almost 20 percent, with customers lining up outside the doors before they even open for the day, said regional director of operations Kerry Henderson.
'If it starts to rain mid-afternoon, we can get rushes of guests coming in from other outdoors spots in Seaport. For our Natick venue, it's a similar story,' said Henderson.
People line up to play mini golf at Puttshack on a recent Wednesday afternoon.
Suzanne Kreiter/Globe Staff
This atypical rainy streak is unlikely to continue much longer, said Mahan. As the summer progresses, the temperature differences that cause storms balance out, bringing more sunny days.
Signature indoor attractions such as the Museum of Fine Arts have also seen a jump in visitors on Boston's dreary weekends. When the weekend days are split between one rainy and one sunny day, like this past weekend, the museum sees a pattern of noticeably more visitors on the rainier day, a spokesperson said.
Although customers have still been making their annual visits to Tony's Clam Shop on Quincy's Wollaston Beach, the weekend crowds to start off the season have been smaller with fewer families bringing young kids for seafood on the restaurant's outdoor patio and beer garden, said owner Gary Kandalaft. The clam shop has also had to cancel live music at its beer garden multiple weekends, not opening the bar they have in the back and closing earlier as soggy crowds disperse.
'It's not like it should be,' said Kandalaft. 'We've had some bad springs, but this has to be near the top.'
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But Funtleyder said she's hopeful that business will see a boost when the weather clears up, with people looking to get back outdoors.
'I am hoping that it does more than bounce back to normal,' she said. 'I'm hoping that people are excited to get outside and they come out and have fun.'
Maren Halpin can be reached at
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About 70 percent of its international undergraduates - 741 out of 1,048 - received financial aid to attend the oldest and most prestigious university in the nation. That share outpaces the 54 percent of the total 6,979 Harvard undergraduates who received financial aid in the last academic year, according to the data. That difference may be because Harvard and the other Ivies remain bastions for America's rich. A significant number of Harvard's seats go to the children of alumni, donors, or athletes who participate in sports associated with wealthy suburbs or American prep schools, such as lacrosse or crew. In addition, exchange rates and unstable economies means that an upper-middle-class family abroad may still struggle to afford an American college tuition and qualify for financial need, experts said. Harvard officials are adamant that its admissions policy is need blind for everyone — international students don't get any preference in financial aid. 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'As the trend toward globalization grew more evident, an effort to admit more students from foreign countries seemed a logical step to take in order to prepare our undergraduates adequately for the world they would inhabit,' Bok said. Other universities launched their own efforts to chase international students. Universities without Harvard's deep pockets targeted wealthy foreign students willing to pay full price. Advertisement International enrollments at New York University and Northeastern University have skyrocketed in the past two decades, and both institutions have attracted mostly full-paying students, offering few foreign students financial help through aid or discounts. New York University admitted about 1,300 foreign undergraduates in 2008. Its foreign enrollment has since skyrocketed to nearly 7,500 students — more than a quarter of its student body. Northeastern students danced during a performance at the university's graduation ceremony at Fenway Park on May 11. Matthew J. Lee/Globe Staff Northeastern University, which admitted fewer than 900 foreign undergraduates in 2008, more than tripled that count to 2,900 students. International enrollment is 15 percent. Even small Augustana College, blocks from the Mississippi River in Illinois, enrolled nearly 500 international students last academic year, about 20 percent of its campus. That's up from about 2 percent a decade ago. Officials at the University of Massachusetts Amherst went hunting for students worldwide for another reason: declining number of US college-bound students as well as a shrinking pool of students from within the state, said Jim Roche, vice provost for enrollment management. Foreign students are treated similarly to out-of-state students, and both generate income for the university, because tuition and fees are double what Massachusetts residents pay. Even when the university gives them aid, a form of tuition discount, they still pay more than in-state students, Roche said. 'In our eyes there's not a whole lot of difference between coming 30 or 40 miles across the state line than 2,000 miles,' he said. International students made up 8 percent of the undergraduates at UMass Amherst last academic year, up from 3 percent a decade ago. The public university gives on average about a $13,600 in aid annually to these students on the $58,485 out-of-state cost of attendance, according to the data. At Dartmouth, the number of international undergraduates grew to 15 percent in the most recent academic year, up from 8 percent a decade ago. Buoyed by an anonymous $40 million gift in 2022, Dartmouth declared it would join a handful of American schools in becoming need-blind for international students (it was already so for domestic students). Since then, the college has reviewed all applications without consideration of whether families could afford the $92,000 annual cost. Three quarters of Dartmouth's nearly 670 international students receive financial aid, with an average aid amount of $84,170 annually, according to the data. Students crossed the campus of Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H., last year. Robert F. Bukaty/Associated Press Now, at the post office in Hanover, N.H., where Dartmouth is located, local residents encounter chatter in a variety of foreign languages. And the college isn't just drawing traditionally wealthy students from China, Canada, England, and South Korea; it's getting more interest from African countries, India, and Kazakhstan, where students are more likely to need financial aid, said Lee Coffin, Dartmouth's vice president and dean of admissions and financial aid. 'We have created this global microcosm here in this college town in the north woods of New Hampshire,' Coffin said in an interview. 'That's exciting.' Coffin has heard the criticisms that foreign students are taking away spots and resources from American undergraduates, but he said the university still largely educates the US-born. Pitting international students who need aid against low- and middle-income American students neglects that these schools still cater to the wealthy, said Anthony A. Jack, a BU associate professor and author of 'Class Dismissed: When Colleges Ignore Inequality and Students Pay the Price.' The private donations that fund scholarships at elite schools including Harvard, also likely come from all over the world, he said. 'Financial aid should not have a citizenship requirement,' Jack said. Still, the political calculus has changed from a decade or two ago, said Robert Kelchen, who heads the University of Tennessee's department of educational leadership and policy studies. 'The idea of giving benefits to immigrants or just flat out international students is a very tough political fight,' he said. Earlier this summer, Trump suggested that Harvard should cap total international student enrollment at 15 percent; it's currently 28 percent. 'We have people who want to go to Harvard and other schools; they can't get in because we have foreign students there,' Trump said. Trump's attacks aside, David A. Bell, a Princeton history professor who considers himself politically liberal, recently argued in a New York Times essay that American universities should seriously reconsider international recruitment. International students can bring benefits such as diverse viewpoints, increased academic excellence, and familial wealth, Bell said. But at top universities, where slots are limited and highly sought, they may make it harder for middle-class US students to get in, Bell said. 'We have to recognize the tradeoffs,' Bell said. 'There is a benefit to keeping the doors as wide open as possible to students from the United States.' Six months into the second Trump administration, universities are facing a reckoning, and it may end with fewer international students on campus. Deirdre Fernandes can be reached at
