There simply isn’t space on most campuses to allow for each student to have a single room. Especially for schools that expect lower classmen to live on campus, they have to fit as many students on campus as possible. Some are building more housing, but many don’t have the room or the resources. And many do not want to increase class size as infrastructure cant support the need for more housing, classroom space, faculty and faculty offices, etc.
Where I went to school, the housing, IIRC were rooms originally designed for a student to have their “attendant” live with them. There were 2 bedrooms and a “sitting room” for one student. Those rooms are now quads ( house 4 students).
If you want to guarantee a single, go to a college that lets you live off campus and get an apartment.
People make too much of the roommate thing. Unless there are very serious issues (and there are, rarely) suck it up, buttercup. It’s one year and after that you can generally do whatever you want.
romanigypsyeyes, I disagree. a roommate even a friend from high school (has a high rate off issues)
upgrading dorms and as they replace older dorms it can be done. dorms can actually be profitable for colleges. and adding an extra wall (interior drywall) and heating/ ac duct costs very little when building a new building or doing a complete gutting of an old dorm… it can be recouped relatively quickly and be profitable after that. (singles cost more per semester)
Zobroward,
Have you seen the size of many dorm doubles? If you think that throwing up a wall and some closet space will turn one room into 2, you may be proposing that students live in space not much bigger than a broom closet. And they will have to make separate entrances for these rooms. Knocking all those holes in all those hallway walls is likely not practical.
One of my daughter’s lived in the freshman complex. All quad suite with single bedrooms, shared double sink/ two toilet and shower rooms, shared kitchenette. There are also upper class men versions, and several apartment complexes owned by the school that are more apartment like. There are a few traditional dorms. The cost was very high, just about $1000 per month.
Other daughter lived in a traditional cinder block construction high rise dorm, with a built in desk with two windows, a double closet, and a sink. If you were to build a wall, it would end up being a room as wide as a bed with no closet. They could hear their neighbors though the cement walls; drywall wouldn’t work. Her cost was about half that of her sister. Both are in very low cost living areas.
On the subject of single rooms for everyone, I recently saw a house hunting TV show where the realtor commented that newer homes are being built with two master suites to accomodate separate / different comfort and sleeping preferences of couples.
Zobroward, there is no double that I or my kids lived in that could have been turned into 2 rooms by the addition of a wall and a separate doorway. None.
My son lived in the broom closet last year, as I’ve said before. Very disappointing, as the single-living aspect of college we had not wanted for him. He had not wanted it for himself, either.
After reading the OP’s statement about the daughter’s roommate expectations, I really did expect that there would be some sort of disruption in roommate’s life that took college off the table for a while. That up-front, pre-emptive, “nice nasty” way of starting things off is always a sign of more going on temperamentally. Hope she readjusts in due time.
My roommate’s boyfriend, someone who had served in the military and been out in the working world with his own apartment before coming to college, told her that he treated his dirty clothes better than I treated my clean clothes. I laugh about that every once in a while even today.
I had roommates all through college. For the two years I lived in my sorority we rotated rooms every quarter so I had a total of 8 living situations vs the 4 a typical student would have. I’m an introvert, I like my privacy, but i can remember exactly one minor squabble in all that time. It’s good to be the kind of person who can get along with people.
“upgrading dorms and as they replace older dorms it can be done. dorms can actually be profitable for colleges. and adding an extra wall (interior drywall) and heating/ ac duct costs very little when building a new building or doing a complete gutting of an old dorm… it can be recouped relatively quickly and be profitable after that. (singles cost more per semester)”
If you gut an old dorm, you aren’t changing the window configurations. You’d need to double the windows. This is really self evident, zo.
zobroward,
If a dorm is built to hold, say 500 students, and a rebuild after gutting can only accommodate 250, where do you propose the other 250 live? In tents on the campus green?
Complete gutting of a building cannot. Remove fire walls. Those must remain per code, as do load bearing walls.
The double my son lived in would,have been a fine single…and I think that is how it will get renovated if the school is able to build enough additional housing to,accommodate the numbers of students who want to live on campus.
Re: this situation…the OPs daughter really needs to advocate for herself in terms of a new roommate. If she has a friend who wants to move in with her…that should be arranged.
My daughter got a new roommate her second semester of freshman year also. The newbie was a gal who didn’t get along with her precious roommate. Guess what? She didn’t exactly fit in with my DD (who is very easy going) either…because the new roommate had issues.
My kid wished she had listened to me…and found someone she knew she could get along with…instead of leaving it up to the college.
thumper1 of course engineering and architecture design work has to be done. I was not implying a couple of handymen go to home depot and get supplies and “wing it”