Are fancy dorms evil?

Parents Forum
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<p>I'm surprised none of the other Philly parents have started a thread on an op-ed piece published in this morning's Inquirer, by an NYU professor who lives in the Philadelphia suburbs (a nice, bobo one):</p>

<p><a href="http://www.philly.com/inquirer/opinion/20071023_Real_price_of_college_dorms.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.philly.com/inquirer/opinion/20071023_Real_price_of_college_dorms.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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That's hardly the kind of luxury that Princeton president Woodrow Wilson envisioned a century ago, when he commissioned residential buildings. Wilson worried that too many students had moved off campus into "eating clubs," which separated them according to interests, tastes and wealth. Better that they live together in monasterylike brick or stone dormitories, sealed off from the world. </p>

<p>"A university was conceived as a place where the community life and spirit were supreme," wrote one Princeton architect in 1909, three years before Wilson entered the White House. "It was a walled city against materialism and all of its works." </p>

<p>After World War I, Harvard erected seven new dormitories along two sides of its famous yard. Featuring elaborate outside details but humble interiors, the dorms created a literal and symbolic divide between students and the surrounding city. </p>

<p>At new women's colleges, meanwhile, educators feared that off-campus boarding houses would lead innocent young women astray. So they took special care to construct solid but simple dormitories that would place all students under college supervision - and on equal economic footing. </p>

<p>"We have a chance to see what the human spirit can do when unhampered either by deprivation or by excess," the dean of Smith College wrote in 1919, praising a new set of dormitories. </p>

<p>. . . .</p>

<p>By providing really nice things for our kids, we're teaching them to expect such goodies as their due. And we're forgetting the older collegiate ideal, which prized the life of the mind over the lure of materialism. </p>

<p>Only a segment of students can afford the new luxuries, of course, which makes matters worse. More colleges now price dorms at different rates, depending on how many bells and whistles are included. So rich kids get the fancier residence halls and poorer students the older ones, which yields the economic divide Wilson and his generation wanted to avoid.

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<p>Maybe Smith was aiming for economic equality, but Bryn Mawr was not (at the time). There were chichi dorms and less desirable dorms. The former luxury dorms still look different today, although now they are all the same price and assigned by lottery.</p>

<p>I agree that charging more for certain dorms is bad news for interaction on campus. I wouldn't have a problem with letting people pay more for singles within a dorm, because they'll still be interacting with their hallmates in doubles. But having a special luxury dorm some students can't afford to enter rubs me the wrong way.</p>

3

<p>Glad you posted the link. My husband steals the Inquirer most weekday mornings and leaves me with the local. </p>

<p>I think there is an Embassy Suites compromise that is offered at many colleges including my son's and the one my daughter attended. Nice rooms or suites but not a place that you would want to live in for more than a couple of years. </p>

<p>I'm glad my son is able to take advantage of his suite style living arrangements and single room. He prizes his sleep and being able to go to bed when he wants, even taking naps during the day if had to stay up late working on a paper or studying the night before, are things that make for a less grumpy student.</p>

4

<p>JHS -
I normally read the Inquirer (or at least skim all sections) before I go to work, but today was unusually hectic and it is still unopened on my kitchen table. I am glad that at the colleges both my kid attend(ed), all rooms are priced the same and dorm assignments are made by a very complex lottery system, and not by ability to pay more money. Some rooms are better than others at their colleges, but none have luxuries as described in the article. I believe that colleges should not institute a housing system which segregates students by how much they (or their parents) are willing or able to pay.</p>

5

<p>My daughter's freshman dorm was built in 1720. And I'm convinced that her room up the attic was servants' quarters back in the day.</p>

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<p>The differential pricing scheme is not limited to private colleges and universities. The flagship public university in this state charges several thousand more per year for the newer dorms. My son's private university, however, charges the same rate for singles, doubles, suites, new dorms, old dorms, all dorms. Frankly, I think it would be a disaster if his private set up different pricing schemes, as it is a school that is trying very hard to diversify its student body. At our public, one can guess which suburb a student hails from by which dorm he/she is living in.</p>

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<p>I agree with Midmo - the private colleges that my kids attend(ed) pride themselves on a very diverse student body, so charging higher prices for better housing would be in direct opposition to the missions of these schools.</p>

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<p>Same for my kids' private schools. Basically, better rooms go to upperclassmen and lottery winners (though my senior S, a lottery loser, is in a barren warehouse of a dorm.)</p>

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<p>I'm pretty sure ours are the same price. Some are better. singles are more I think, but I'm pretty sure you need a reason, you can't just get one. I'm in one of the "bad" dorms but it's pretty livable. Not fancy, not new, but perfectly adequate. It's only 9 months or whatever anyway. At all of the public schools my friends go to in the state, it was a lottery type deal as well, with some dorms being nicer, but not really different prices unless you count single/double/triple differences. I have heard of this, but I don't know whether it's very common yet. I think the bigger difference is that when on campus housing is more affordable, the more affluent population still flocks off campus to independent housing after freshmen year leaving them separated from students who still live in more affordable dorms (especially if they have financial aid or scholarships that help keep the price down). I am not saying everyone who lives in the dorms after first year isn't well off, but generally most students living off campus are able to pay more here.</p>

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<p>Carnegie Mellon charges more for suites and still more for apartments. On the one hand I think it's fair, the kids who have more space ought to pay more. OTOH my kid didn't ask for an apartment, he just agonized over his decision so long that was all that was left. My understanding is that CMU didn't exactly plan to have so many choices they bought up existing apartment buildings to use as dorms and didn't renovated them into tiny little dorm rooms.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
Only a segment of students can afford the new luxuries, of course, which makes matters worse. More colleges now price dorms at different rates, depending on how many bells and whistles are included. So rich kids get the fancier residence halls and poorer students the older ones, which yields the economic divide Wilson and his generation wanted to avoid.

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<p>And the "bling" dorms with their extra costs drive the students who are loading up on debt further into the hole to avoid the negative social status of being only able to afford the economy dorm.</p>

<p>With college becoming less affordable, I think a new emphasis needs to come back to the idea of "living like a college student" (in the classic sense). And I think this can only come from the top schools - the Harvards, Princetons, for if they simplify (and cut the cost of) student housing, the next tier down will not feel as much need to keep up with those well-heeled schools lifestyle. </p>

<p>Any place below the top will cost the brave schools that try in the competition that goes beyond price to the lifestyle.</p>

<p>Let's face it, the kids today at our local big name State U quickly move out of the dorms into plush luxury condos with parking for their SUVs. And the school combats this by shuttering the old dorms and planning for plusher and larger facilities for fear of losing upperclassmen to the off-campus living (no forced on-campus after frosh year) and losing freshmen to other schools (privates) with nicer facilities. I don't think this school can lead the charge.</p>

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<p>
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the Harvards, Princetons, for if they simplify (and cut the cost of) student housing, the next tier down will not feel as much need to keep up with those well-heeled schools lifestyle.

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<p>Well, I hope that Harvard does not simplify even further. S is bunking. So much for vast, luxuriously appointed rooms. He lives on the third floor in a House without an elevator, which is an improvement over his freshman dorm, where he lived on the fourth floor without an elevator (and where he also bunked).</p>

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<p>uh goaliedad, I don't know if you've ever visited the dorms at Princeton or Harvard, but since I'm sitting in one right now, I can tell you that it's not exactly the Ritz. In fact, I'd say that it's nothing more than a standard college dorm. There are some nice dorm rooms that are mostly upperclass housing - and cost no more than other rooms.</p>

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<p>At our state u's the air conditoned dorms cost more than the non-a/c dorms and the on- campus apts (for jrs/srs. only). cost the most, more than renting an off campus apt. Seems like if they really wanted to keep the kids on campus they would make them slightly less than the private sector apts. Of course they don't have to pay thru the summer like the off campus apts. but so many of the kids stay there year round to work in the summers that it's a better deal to have an off-campus place.</p>

<p>The most expensive dorms are those built by private developers on land adjacent to the campus so it seems like they are an on-campus dorm. These dorms have their own cafeteria, private parking for the residents and even swimming pools. </p>

<p>S's freshman dorm was built right after WWII to accomadate returning GI's. It is air conditioned now but every thing else seems to be exactly the same as it was built..cinderblock walls, linoleum floor, tiny closets, small hall bathrooms shared by multitudes of freshmen boys.</p>

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<p>I'm not certain that air conditioning or carpeting is going to corrupt students or divert their attention from their studies. But multi-tier dorm pricing -- which I hadn't thought much about before today -- may really tear at the fabric of a university.</p>

<p>And then there's my kids' college, where half the students -- the vast majority of upperclassmen -- live off campus. Of course, that's a tiered market. My daughter has shown me the buildings where the rich kids live. Again, I didn't think much about it at the time, but that's so fundamentally different from the college experience I had that it makes me quite sad. I think that's the trend at Penn, too. The condo market along the western edge of Center City has been red-hot for several years, even with a downturn elsewhere, and a big part of it is people buying condos for their Penn students to live in, and then reselling them (or keeping them as rental properties) when they graduate. All kinds of new condos are being planned for the Penn area to accommodate that trend. But it means that students of different wealth levels may interact far less than they used to.</p>

<p>By the way, I think at the Ivies the one-price-fits-all egalitarian policy is much more recent than Woodrow Wilson's time. I'm not sure when it started, but I suspect the post-WWII period. I'm sure there were "Gold Coast" rooms at least through the '30s.</p>

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<p>
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But it means that students of different wealth levels may interact far less than they used to.

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<p>JHS, I find your last post interesting. As of this year, the "rule" at Vanderbilt Univ. is that all undergraduates will have to live in campus housing all four years. (A lot of building is underway.) As of now, all housing is the same price, to my knowledge. I am wondering if this approach is a deliberate plan to avoid some of what you suggest may be happening at Penn.</p>

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<p>Well-heeled lifetsyle? Hardly. The cramped servants quarters I referred to in post #5 were at Harvard. No elevator - it was 44 steps up to her room and 44 steps back down. I counted them with every box and suitcase I lugged up there. Now that she is a senior and getting the choice rooms in her House, she has a bit more space, but it's still nothing beyond a basic dorm suite.</p>

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<p>JHS, you might be happy to know that as a resident of Hyde Park, I don't get a sense of an upstairs-downstairs tiering much at all. I would say that students whose parents' are ready and able to "pony up" and show it tend to pick high rises with lake views and separation from the community. The views are nice. That's about it. More lost than gained, IMO. Why go to the U of C at all, if urban living makes you uncomfortable?</p>

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<p>Right, that's what I mean.</p>

<p>Actually, I think some of those students don't live in the high rises along the lake. But lots do. It's a different neighborhood. Just like real life, unfortunately.</p>

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<p>It's an interesting sociological point but I think that if young men and women from the 21st century were given the choice to attend somewhere with an austure, world of the mind, monastic dorm or one like they would have at Trinity U or (for the girls) Scripps they would definately choose comfort and the mind over focusing on the mind only. As a mom I say that my kid being comfy will have an effect on how well she learns so I am in favor of cush. As a sociologist I would say that the 21st century college freshman has had a life of indulgence and in order to compete for our tuition money colleges must also indulge our kids. Classic structural functionalism. It isn't evil but it certainly different than Woodrow Wilson's vision. I don't think that if their intellectual life is top notch and balanced with their spiritual life that a little hedonism in the dorm room will matter much in the scheme of things.</p>