Part of the explosion in college costs has been the development of student housing. It’s insane how nice some college housing is for undergrad.
When I started at a state school in 2003 we had dorms built in the 60’s that resembled the architecture of the Soviet Union and came equipped with elevators that literally stopped mid floor that you’d crawl out of.
When I finished they were tearing those down as they opened glass and steel modern high rises.
Davis is a college town and the majority of the housing would go to students if something like that got built. These would not be like inner-city projects, they would be like giant dorms.
I agree! I think this need really shines at universities where housing hasn't kept up with enrollment, so common areas are converted to living space, living space becomes more crowded, etc. Squeezes students out of a lot other spaces they might have otherwise used for working, collaborative or otherwise.
Hijacking the thread a bit, but I'm not sure people understand how predatory student housing is in aggregate.
At many colleges you don't even have a choice to live in the dorms or not as an undergrad, living on campus for 1-2 years is tied to enrollment.
On top of this lots of financing for college housing is wonky, because some colleges do not pay property tax. (So you can have the college hold the land and some third party company finance/build the building students are forced to live in.) This is a significant part of ACC's business model.[0] Student loan money is used to pay rent on these buildings, so it's indirectly funded by taxpayers.
The power colleges have over students lives is concerning regardless of if this dorm design is good or bad. If UCSB put in one of these requirements students could be forced to take part in a social experiment designed by a billionaire. UCSB, or another campus w/ a Munger dorm, doesn't have this requirement today but could have it tomorrow.
The college I went to FINALLY tore down the slums south of campus (I guess maybe that was the city that condemned them) and built more, affordable student housing. It only took them 100 years.
I guess my point is, even college administrators from Texas can eventually learn that affordable housing for students and staff can be a benefit.
How is that yeesh exactly? They’re building these right now in Tempe Arizona, and NOT as dorms for college kids. I absolutely would have loved living in a building like that during my early 20s.
This is fantastic. As a college student I can absolutely attest that this is one of the coolest dorms I've ever seen and completely wish my dorm was as cool as this. Might be a project for next year.
Students can do as they always have done, rent a room somewhere nearby if they want to attend college X.
But if the local, not-famous C.C. just opened a set of dormitories while its offerings stay the same as in previous years it's clear that they are trying to cannibalize from the student body in the next few counties. And at the end of the day, it's only the building contractor that benefits.
I know someone who once bought a house built by students, but I'm not sure whether they were high school students or community college students. They didn't do any excavation work though, and it ended up being moved to the final site rather than any excavation work being involved. This was in southern Maine.
College campuses are the closest many people get to living in a proper city center (in the spirit of Europe or Japan), as opposed to the suburbs we all flee too later in life.
At face value, you're right--but shouldn't we focus on building places people (young and old) can feel a sense of community beyond just college?
Campustowns have lots of big houses like this. It's kind of cool to walk through the neighborhood, they're like stereotypical houses but blown up by 150%
After a few years of being lived in by 19 year olds it will probably lose the tony stark sheen.
Amherst College. It's pretty common at top private colleges, and it also seems more common at rural schools than urban ones. If every college student in Amherst needed to get an apartment, I think the townspeople would panic, since there were 7000 of them and 35,000 of us. (Okay, this is misleading, since about 32,000 of those college students are at UMass, which occasionally does house students off-campus. Amherst and Hampshire don't, though.)
(Irony: many of these same students who go through 4 years never having to manage money are then hired on Wall Street to...you guessed it...manage money. Maybe that explains the current crisis.)
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