This thought occured to me as I was reading another thread. I’ve spent my fair share of time going to university (about 8 years in total), yet I’ve never lived in a dormitory, or other on-campus housing.
As the trend is for U.S. universities now to require freshmen to live on-campus, I wonder how prevalent this is anymore.
Both of my daughters were transfer students from our community college, so they weren’t required to live on campus either.
Anyone else never live in a dorm?
I haven’t actually graduated yet, but I will later this year. I’ve been going to a local university and living at home the whole time. Nobody lives on campus here, only international/regional students. Everyone else either rents a place or lives at home. It’s a bit lame but there you go.
Spanish universities with campuses are a very recent innovation, as is university-managed housing. Although I did live in a “students’ residence,” it wasn’t linked to my university at all; we had students from the three universities that existed there at the time. Any university over 50 years old will have its colleges strewn all over town; there’s newer ones where most colleges share a campus, but there’s no dorms there. The ones that have dorms are “in the middle of nowhere” with reference to their town.
When I went to grad school in the US, I lived on campus for a couple of months. This gave me time to get acquainted with the local rental market and customs (it was pre-www) before I started looking for something else.
I’m going to take a Master’s in Scotland this year; the university has dorms (the kind where students get boarding but there’s no kitchens), shared apartments on campus and university-managed apartments off campus.
Do you have a citation that says that it’s more common these days for colleges to require students to live on campus? I think that it’s actually less common. In fact, I believe that the proportion of college students who go to colleges that have dormitories at all is less these days.
In general, I think the following rule holds: College students (in the U.S.) less and less resemble the stereotype of what you think college students are like from watching older movies and TV shows.
So, for instance, the proportion of students who enter college immediately after high school is less and less as time goes by.
The proportion of students who graduate in four years is less and less as time goes by.
The proportion of students who go full-time to college is less and less as time goes by.
The proportion of students who live on campus is less and less as time goes by.
The proportion of students who attend four-year institutions all through college is less and less as time goes by.
The proportion of students who get degrees in liberal arts subjects is less and less as time goes by.
The proportion of students who are in fraternities or sororities is less and less as time goes by.
The proportion of students who are on athletic teams is less and less as time goes by.
UCF was historically a commuter school, and grew really, really fast during the 80s, 90s and this decade, so the amount of on-campus housing was never able to keep up with the student body. IIRC only 15% of the undergraduate student body lived on campus when I was a freshman.
I lived across from campus my freshman year, here- basically, it’s a Days Inn converted into double-occupancy student housing. I only lived there because the university’s housing department told me that every other local individual-lease facility was “sold out” for the upcoming year (which turned out to be bullshit).
I lived in an off-campus fraternity house in my second year.
Lived in a student townhouse complex during my third and fourth years. Place was a dump the whole time because we constantly had parties and got sick of mopping up spilled beer, so we just sort of let it sit.
I lived in a conventional apartment complex during my final year - this one, in fact.
Lived at home and commuted - only eight miles or so. Yeah, there’s a stigma about living at home - but it got me through college and grad school without any debt.
From September 1972, when I entered Loyola College in Baltimore as a commuter student, until I graduated from Franklin University in Columbus, OH in May of 2007, I never lived on campus. My five adult children have all lived on campus for at least one of their university years.
Unfortunately, no. However, that’s been a requirment of every university which my kids and my friends’ kids have applied to over the last few years. Maybe it’s a regional thing.
I’ve attended 13 different colleges/universities. I’ve never lived on campus.
^^ That’s because your shirts are too loud.
Google search results for ‘percent of freshmen living on campus’. Some places it’s over 95%.
I never lived on campus.
I never lived on campus. I did live with a group of boys my first year - 8 - in a house. I think it would have been better for all of us to have more rules.
Here in NC for the most part they stopped building college dorms 20 years ago. They built a bunch in the 60s and a few after that. Now less than 20% live in dorms at the big schools and I don’t think any require freshmen in dorms. The schools have grown a lot but the dorm space hasn’t changed in those 20 years.
Smaller schools tend to have a lot higher number of people in dorms.
Right. At some colleges and universities, most freshmen live on campus. However, most college students in the US do not.
I’m a University of Washington student who has never lived on campus. I am quite certain that I will graduate without having lived on campus.
I had to work full-time* the entire time I was in Engineering and Graduate School, and lived off-campus - in fact, I had to commute 80 miles round-trip to school every day. When I think back on it now I wonder how I had time to finish one of the hardest degree programs on campus doing that schedule. It helps that I only sleep 5 hours a night, but still, every time I hear a whiny student tell me that I “don’t understand” the “pressure” they’re under, when they have a full-ride scholarship, housing a 5-minute walk from class, they went on vacation that year, and they have no job, it…well, it doesn’t make me any more inclined to give them a break on a paper or test. 
Campus housing insn’t exactly cheap. I would think a lot of freshmen would use it 'cause it saves time looking for a flat, but once they are there are year, they can branch out and look at cheaper or larger accommodations.
I never did and I’m eternally grateful. I probably wouldn’t have gone to college if it’d been a requirement; I think I’d have hated living in a dorm worse than I hate fat free mayonaisse. (I went to state universities that didn’t have a residency requirement.)
I’d already bought a house, owned my car, and been to war by the time I got around to college. I commuted from my house. I regret it. I feel like there’s so much I missed. I should have rented a place nearby. Then I’d have been able to make more friends and do more things with the friends I did make.
I never lived on campus. In Montreal, although McGill and U de M (and now UQAM I think) have dorms, it’s very common for students to live off-campus in apartments, which is what I did. I was from Montreal, though.