If you mean lack of a window (the main criticism), then yes. However, a prison or Navy ship would have a much higher density of people in the sleeping spaces.
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The pod concept is becoming more popular, for example one of the newer buildings at Utah has this on one floor (though some pods do have windows): Room Types – Housing & Residential Education (Lassonde). Generally the students adapt, and you spend most of your non-studying time in the shared spaces.
If you compare this to the tiny, non air conditioned triples that are very common at most UCs, it seems quite pleasant. Those rooms were small enough that you couldn’t spend time in them anyway, so you had to go to the library, coffee shops etc to study. And it’s obviously a very efficient use of space on a fairly small site. Would it really be better to build a dorm for 2000 with windows instead and maintain the current overcrowding?
Perhaps the expectation in the US that having a roommate is part of the college experience makes the idea of individual small bedrooms a harder sell? Coming from the UK I’d put the chance to have personal non-shared bedroom space above a lot of other amenities. I had a college bedroom where the window faced a brick wall a few feet away and I never even opened the curtains.
UCSB needs as many dorm rooms as it can get on a very expensive parcel of land. This proposed building looks to me is an effort to put students in singles as densely as possible. Compromises were, and had to be, made to achieve that goal. They aren’t trying to build a luxury hotel with oceanview rooms where guests may want to spend a lot of time alone and not interact with one another. Instead, they may want students to spend more time outside of their rooms and interact with each other more in common areas.
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I would hate living in a windowless room, even if it was just for sleeping. My kid would too. This type of dorm set up would have been enough to take a school off her list.
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Given the choice (and the same cost), I’d agree that students would choose a room with window over a similar room without window. But if the alternative is a small triple or a much more costly single, the choice may not be so obvious. In places where real estate is expensive, people may have to sacrifice something. In Hong Kong, for example, there’re plenty of hotel guests who would book windowless rooms (even in some supposedly luxury hotels) to save money.
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Many suite style dorms have a window in every bedroom, so this was a choice the architect made to have no windows in some of the rooms. It’s not difficult to imagine that having no windows in the bedrooms would be perceived as undesirable.
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Suites or pods are not really new in college dorms.
As described in post #11 above, that is the tradeoff for completely filling in a large approximately square building (with relatively low exterior wall to interior area ratio), which allows for housing more students on the given land area than if some of the land were left unbuilt to give more exterior wall to have more windows.
That the rooms are arranged in suites or pods is not all that unusual, and probably would not by itself be controversial. Nor would all single rooms that are probably about half the size of a typical double room be likely to be controversial. It is the windowless bedrooms that seem to be what is unusual and controversial. Some seem to be complaining about the density, but there are college dorms at other campuses (not necessarily new dorms) with higher student density per interior area, with fewer or worse amenities.
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I was thinking more like steerage on the Titanic. Students that may be susceptible to SAD need not apply. Literally.
The irony here is that UC Santa Barbara is located on the beach with gorgeous views and they’re considering building a mostly windowless dorm.
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Some of the more recent reviews say the Michigan apartments were great until the pandemic. Then they weren’t able to use the common areas and were restricted to windowless rooms.
My kid who went to UCSB doesn’t like the idea at all. It sure seems like a very expensive experiment. Even half that amount fo beds would ease the housing situation a lot. Before the pandemic, it wasn’t a problem to get university housing for all 4 years.
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You really aren’t going to suffer from sunshine deprivation at UCSB. This would be more of a problem in a cold/wet climate where you spend the winter indoors. If it works in Michigan then I can’t imagine it not working in Isla Vista.
Students aren’t usually locked in their bedrooms, but interestingly the complaints about this format were much greater during COVID when that was more the case for some students.
It would be a lot more expensive to build half the number of beds for what would not be anything close to a 50% reduction in cost.
And don’t we want popular UCs to be able to increase enrollment given the constant complaints about top students being shut out?
I would suggest we need another UC, not max out the current ones so that they are bursting at the seams.
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I’d rather have half the suite size with 4 roommates. I thought the Michigan common room was the waste of space with the double sized kitchen and two of everything, plus 2 sitting rooms with TVs. Can you really watch 2 tv’s at the same time, while cooking and some students studying in the center?
My daughter’s suite was a hall of singles, but they didn’t have their own bathrooms. The bedrooms were NOT as big as the Michigan ones, with single beds, a desk (built in) and closet, but did have a small window. No w/d in the suite, and the kitchen was very small as it was not designed for cooking (they still had to have meal plans).
Students study in libraries without windows.
I’ve spent many weeks in Santa Barbara over the years. Foggy in the AM and sunshine in the PM. Some kids actually spend a lot of time in their dorm room studying (best WiFi), like my two kids. This would not be good for them.
My D18 who’s currently at Michigan actually considered a windowless room in another apartment building, but we quickly scuttled it because of no windows. I have one at SLO. And we would have nixed SLO if there was a good chance of windowless dorms.
IMO, if UCSB wants to increase desirability, then build dorms with windows.
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Hmm. Windowless room in Isla Vista at a top 30 university or attend a new UC with little or no existing reputation in the Central Valley or on the North Coast.
Not a hard choice. Ask UC Merced.
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Why would they need to “increase desirability” with over 100K applications per year? The priority should be accepting and accommodating more of those students.
D has an apartment style suite with single 12X8 bedrooms, shared bath (one between two) and full kitchen and lounge. It’s wonderful, though granted they have big windows with views of the mountains. They have two formats, a split level 8 person and a single level 4 person suite, and it was definitely helpful to have two kitchens and two living rooms when there were 8 people.
It looks to me like UCSB is skimping a bit on bathroom facilities compared to the grad housing elsewhere, and so having groups of 8 is needed, because 2 bathrooms for 8 works way better than 1 bathroom for 4.
There’s a generally recognized UC pecking order. Changing that paradigm is possible by increasing the desirability of the campus.
Also, from what I’ve read, the trend in the future is that CA high school graduates will decline:
So, UC’s may be fighting over smaller pools of applicants.
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That was exactly my thought when I watched the Michigan video.
The whole thing gives me squid game vibes 
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