Any university grads here who never lived on campus?

In My Humble Opinion
41

This is pure nonsense. The job of universities is to educate. We were naturally exposed to “every walk of life” in the class room.

I personally can’t believe you would make such a statement having attended an institution of higher learning but lets go down that road. Do you think commuting students never interacted with campus students? What enriching experience did your fraternity provide that my friends didn’t? Was it the fact that you had to prove yourself worthy of a hazing party? My friends didn’t require that of me. We had fun as a group without a certification process.

How is coming home from classes to an overpriced hamster cage full of noisy kids better than living at home? I came and went as I pleased with the only stipulation that I didn’t return with any unplanned children. I studied, went to parties and did everything every other student did. If there was a group project it was a given that we met at someone’s house where we had room to work on stuff. When visiting dorms I saw nothing that resembled an enriching experience.

At best, I would compare living in a dorm to roughing it in a tent. Fun for 1 week, sucks for the remaining 51. Been there, done that, couldn’t wait to leave a dorm when picking someone up.

42

We had a cooler on wheels that we took to class during Octoberfest. Not sure I want to put that in the enriching column of college experiences. We had a separate “stupid human drinking tricks” column for those memories.

Of course, when I went to school 18 year olds could drink so we would meet after class for a beer and a pizza when funds allowed it. I suspect the beer taps are long gone.

43

I specifically avoided my initial #1 choice of school (Michigan State University, fwiw) once I found out they would require me to live on campus. Look, I already lived away from my parents. Why would I pay almost twice my apartment’s rent at the time to have to share a small little one-room box with some stranger? I work, I pay my rent, dammit I should get my alone time in my own home. I just wanted to attend class there, not get some sort of “lifestyle experience” with a bureaucracy attempting to act as a parent and tell me what I can and cannot do in my free time.

44

The reason that some colleges require students to live on campus is for retention purposes. In the higher education research literature, it’s generally acknowledged that students who are academically integrated (going to class, etc.) as well as socially integrated (belonging to clubs, living in a res hall) are the ones that successfully complete degrees.

I went to college in my hometown. Campus is 9 miles from my house, door to door. The vast majority of us from my high school (about seven) commuted. I was the only one who lived in a dorm, while one or two others lived in apartments.

Five years later, I think three of us finished - two commuters and me. One of the commuters’ dad was a professor at another college and hopelessly brilliant. The two friends of mine ranked higher than me in our graduating class didn’t finish in five - one never finished and the other took another two years, when he moved to an apartment near campus.

But without question, I think my experiences of being integrated in the campus community was light years different from my peers. I was an RA, got involved with student government, clubs, Greek stuff, etc. It was pretty easy to do this stuff when you lived across the street from it. I could park my car and do everything - eat, sleep, study, party, play - right there on campus with 15 minutes’ notice. My buddies had to plan stuff. So I could go to the dorm, power nap, and head out for night meetings where my buddies were wiped out after two morning classes… they headed home and sure as hell weren’t coming back at 5 pm for a club meeting.

So many things happen on the spur of the moment at a residential campus, and you end up meeting people at the most random times. In five years, I left a campus of 50,000 feeling like I knew too many people. The campus didn’t seem big to me at all.

Of course, I was an anomaly in a lot of activities - like living in a dorm - because I was from the city. Luckily I was on a scholarship and it paid (mostly) for my room and board, and then I was an RA throughout school. So for me it was a good investment that first year.

I sincerely think that most commuting students have a radically different college experience than residential ones. Now for some, especially older students, that might not matter. But a large number of students want an “experience,” not just classes. That’s what living on campus provides for you.

I’m racking my brain to think of any commuting students that were really involved in the clubs, student government, or the service/leadership stuff I did. None come to mind. I do think it’s possible to get most of this stuff if you live near campus, but not necessarily on campus. We have a variety of apartments, condos, and shitholes right next to campus and I think those kids have access to the same stuff. But living in a uni-affiliated dorm means that programming and information flows much easier than living on your own. In a dorm it’s easy to knock on somebody’s door and head to a meeting (and vice versa); as an off-campus student you have to read bulletin boards and depend on your friends on campus to keep you in the loop.

45

I got my degree from the University of Michigan and I never lived there. My Masters is from Eastern Michigan University, and I got the entire thing online, so I’ve only been there a couple times.

I guess I’m not typical.

46

My freshman year, I lived in an off-campus dorm. After that, I lived in apartments.

47

Oh Paaleeeeaaase:rolleyes:. The college gets to charge twice as much money for half the space rented. It’s a gold mine and they know it. It’s more likely that the commuters who can’t afford the overpriced dorms in the first place are struggling financially to stay in school.

When they’re not overcharging for rooms they’re making students sit on gold plated books. They don’t even bother to soft sell that aspect of college but if they did it would be billed as a cleansing a pulp colonic.

48

They got your dorm money, you just didn’t get the dorm.

49

It’s true. I actually wrote a letter to U of Mich., requesting a donation to me. I figured they ask me for donations; why not return the favor?

They did not, alas, give me any money back.

50

I just wanted to second this- University students here don’t live on campus unless they’re from overseas or small country towns.

We don’t have fraternities here either, at least not in the US sense, but I still have plenty of friends and social interaction at Uni and we’ll often hit the pub after classes on a Friday for a couple of drinks (and that’s all it is- a couple of social drinks, not getting completely shitfaced and carrying on like a porkchop as seems to happen in the US).

Am I missing out? Hell no. Some of the most interesting discussions I’ve had at Uni have been over a few drinks at the pub. We’ve got students from Holland, from the UK, from Vietnam, from Indonesia, and heaps of other places. And I feel I’ve learnt as much from having drinks and talking with them as I have from going to classes.

I think the important corollary to the OP’s question is “Why do US Universities require or strongly encourage students to live on-campus?” It seems counter-productive to me.

51

I went to a local community college, where I now work. Only a few miles from home, and no on-campus housing anyway.

The university I went to after that is just down the road from the CC, so no need to live there either.

52

That’s a good question. I don’t like the policy, either.

53

The American comprehensive university is a hybrid of two models - the British residential college (Oxbridge) and the German research uni. And seeing as the former came first (think Harvard and Yale) the residential college is what most four-year institutions aspire to. The commuter college is a post-WWII innovation - think of the large number of GIs back from the war who were older than most students, and bought homes and had families as they returned to school.

Most community and two-year colleges are commuter but there are some residential ones. The American “dream college” experience is still residential, and that’s what most competitive admission schools sell as the experience. While you probably don’t know who taught Al Gore chemistry at Harvard, you might know that Tommy Lee Jones was his roommate. The idea that you share a room with a fellow classmate, and you might form a bond for life is a strong one. Furthermore, competitive colleges have to compete for the best (and a sizable number of full-fee paying) students. Attractive residence halls, computer labs, gyms, state-of-the-art libraries, and dining halls are some of the top concerns of students and colleges invest their monies thusly. (Actually, it’s mostly for faculty, but unless you can name-drop a Nobel laureate or two, it’s a wash for most parents and students.)

Magiver, you have clearly never seen a typical housing division budget. Most housing divisions are auxiliary, meaning that they have to generate their own revenue to stay in the black. They operate on razor-thin margins, and have to provide programming, amenities like rec rooms, gyms, and entertainment centers, not to mention custodial staff and security. A lot of the reason that students complain about dorms at many campuses is because they have to delay maintenance over longer periods of time because there isn’t enough in the budget to replace windows, furniture, etc.

54

To answer the OP: Good God no. I wouldn’t have attended a school that required it. At home I had my own bedroom, shared the bathroom with one person, and had very few rules; why on earth would I want to share my bedroom with a stranger, the bathroom with 80 other people, and have more rules than I could keep track of shoved down my throat?

55

Actually, a friend of mine manages university property for a private Ohio school and the repair money flows like water over Niagara Falls. I say this because we’ve had discussions regarding the amount of damage caused by students. Apparently the dorm experience is physically demanding and the rent charged covers it.

I played on a collegiate team so much of my day revolved around the campus (at least during the summer and Fall). The last thing I wanted after a busy day (including work) was a roommate and a noisy apartment complex. I got enough of that on the travel bus and motels. If my friends and I had the free time and 2 nickels to rub together we painted the town as best we could. Otherwise we retired to our individual vacation retreats (aka home). We had our fill of school during the day.

This discussion sounds very much like city versus suburbs. Some people are willing to pay more money for smaller living quarters in exchange for the atmosphere of city life. Others prefer the genteel life of the suburbs as a buffer from the atmosphere of city life.

56

The only times I ever “lived” in a dorm were: (a) middle school band camp at the local university and (b) when I got wasted and passed out on their floor.

My parents kicked me out before college, so I already had a place. I never really needed to live on campus, though it would have been nice so I could have met more people. Oh, well.

57

This is just ridiculous from start to finish. The job of a university is to provide an education. Life experiences and such is not their job and more importantly not something they should be allowed to choose which ones someone should or should not have.

What about people who really, really want to experience life off campus?

I personally think that anyone who did not spend all their college years living on their own is unqualified to comment on its merits. (I.e., just put the shoe on the other foot here and see things from other people’s perspectives for once!)

Like I’ve said before, what if it went the other way: 51 percent liked living off campus and forced everyone else to go along with that. Would that be fair? Of course not. Why is it fair if 51 percent thought living on campus was great and forced everyone to follow them?

And don’t get me started on this “prestigious school” nonsense.

58

This is a major source of problems for residential life staff. Since houses have gotten bigger as families have gotten smaller fewer and fewer students have any experiance sharing a bedroom (or even a bathroom) with someone else for more that a few days at a time. I never did and I absolutely hated living in a dorm freshman year. I never even had to deal with community bathrooms (I was in a suite), but ended up sleeping though those damn biweekly 3:00am fire drills.

59

See, that’s the problem I have with university residential life. You don’t interact with all types of people, you interact almost exclusively with people from 18 to 22 years of age from predominantly middle class families. Sure, they come from different towns, some may even come from different countries, but as you said yourself further up the thread, the purpose is assimilation. It’s a cloister. (Almost literally in schools with separate dorms by sex.) I don’t believe that students who are out in the world are lacking that experience.

My university was also quite distinct in this way, and I will grant that other schools have their own demographic anomalies. At the school I attended, the vast majority of campus residents were white and from small towns, or international students, who were the comparatively wealthy kids from India and China. The real diversity was in the commuters, who were often first-generation university students from the city, who were balancing work and school. Many were from traditional backgrounds that did not encourage leaving home before marriage, and a lot just couldn’t have afforded it. Most of us also simply weren’t from cultures that considered the residence experience a part of growing up, like birthday parties and summer camp.

Of course, I’m not from the U.S. and as has been pointed out, it really is a distinctly American tradition.

60

As Hippy Hollow mentioned above, the US model of dorm living originates in the residential college system of Oxford and Cambridge. But per this list, residential colleges exist at various schools in Europe, Asia, Australia and Canada, as well as the US.

Now, the dormitories at most schools are not full-fledged residential colleges. But they do help to establish a sense of community.