Yes, of course. Most schools that get students from outside the immediate area need residence buildings. But only American schools seem to have requirements that all students live in residence, and encourage it even of local students. I’ve only ever heard the “you don’t really experience college till you do the residence thing” and “it’s as valuable a part of your education as your classes” from Americans, too.
There may be a school where that’s true, but I’ve never heard of it. The residency requirement at my alma mater, for example, applied only to first-year students (which is the new lingo for freshmen there), and even then it didn’t apply to local residents or to older students.
OK, in looking further, Yale apparently requires both freshmen and sophomores to live on campus (but not upperclassmen). Presumably this is to establish ties to one’s college. I suppose that if you really don’t want to live on campus, you could decline to attend Yale.
^^ That’s the excuse I’m going to use ! 
I had to live on campus my freshman year. Only nontraditional (older) students didn’t have to, and “townies” IIRC could petition to stay at home but every local resident I met lived in the dorms. Dorms were how you met your friends and did your socializing. Even though the friends I met that year were not lasting ones, I am glad I had the dorm experience. I even stayed in the dorms sophomore year too, a lot of people did. Our campus was huge and commuting required (almost always) parking your car at a satellite lot and taking a bus shuttle into campus. Huge school and no parking. So making it to class was WAY easier while living in the dorms as was meeting up with profs at office hours, hitting the library, bookstore, etc. And I dunno, campus life was fun. Always people around. And campus was walking distance to downtown with restaurants, shops, bars (although unfortunately wasn’t old enough to take advantage then). I actually really miss living there. There is nothing else like it.
This discussion is a classic clash of generational priorities. In the US, colleges and universities never cottoned on beyond the rich and well-connected until the passage of the Morrill Land Grant Acts in the late 1800s, which really was the springboard of expansion of higher education. Now colleges could provide a real service (education with application for the building of communities and the country - engineers, farm scientists, doctors, and so forth) for a broad section of society.
Most of these colleges were built in towns exclusively constructed for the college. So there was a need for places for students to live. And of course, the dominant model is the residential college. There is a colorful history of strained relationships between college students and “townies” - this is true in cities like Cambridge and New Haven, which experienced riots and melees between students and cityfolk. Living on campus was as much about protecting students as it was about creating a “college experience.”
But inevitably the residential experience is what makes campuses unique. At a place like Harvard, the first question you ask a fellow alum is not what year he/she graduated, or what concentration they were - you ask what house he/she lived in.
Residence halls are not easily converted, so a campus that experienced significant growth in the early to middle 20th century (which is what happened to the majority of colleges in the US) built dormitory-style housing because a) it was cheap and durable, b) it was sufficient for students primarily on campus to study, and c) it wasn’t completely dissimilar to the experience for most students. (Many kids shared rooms with siblings before they came to college.)
Of course now most college-bound kids that live in residence halls have had a private room, and perhaps even a private bathroom all their lives. Apartment-style suites are more to the liking of parents and students, with all mod cons.
Campuses that are regional flagships usually don’t require students to live on campus because they don’t need to. They can sell out their halls very easily and have waiting lists a mile long. But smaller colleges struggle with creating a sense of community - which affects things like alumni giving and engagement. As much as many of the folks who have posted here want to envision the relationship with their college as limited to four years and a degree, the college wants you to bond for life. The Harvard alumni magazine has ads for all kinds of giving - and quite brazenly, one ad asks, “Have you provided for Harvard in your estate planning?” Most colleges, and certainly all of the “prestigious” ones, are nonprofit and actually provide the education for most students at a significantly subsidized cost. Donations are their lifeblood and they are not going miss the opportunity to turn you into an alum that gives regularly. If that’s more likely to happen because you play on a sport team, or live in the residence halls, those things are going to happen.
Obviously one certain way to encourage and develop the sense of connection to one’s alma mater is to have you literally immersed in it - which is why many colleges make students live on campus. There’s the previously mentioned issue of retention and student performance. And the pendulum is swinging back towards a stronger focus on in loco parentis - the college acting in the place of the parent - after three decades of moving away from this model. If the college is going to assume responsibility for students, they want to be able to monitor them closely.
On the other hand, a lot of students want a degree and don’t give a toss about beautiful grounds, the football team, or singing the alma mater at graduation. This is why the University of Phoenix and other for-profits are doing so well right now. Truthfully, it isn’t a new idea, and I expect that these for-profits will gain a greater share of the market - but there will always be a line a mile long for people willing to pay to have the elite residential college experience (or a reasonable facsimile).
This is what I was going to mention. I can’t tell you the name of our University’s Rugby team off the top of my head (or if they even have one), and frankly, I don’t care about the various on-campus clubs.
Everyone else I know feels the same way. We’d like the campus to look nice and be conducive to a learning environment, but if the rugby team need new uniforms or want to go and play a team in Vanuatu, then they can pay for it themselves.
From what I can tell, pulling kids out of home or existing accommodation and making them live on campus just seems to be a chance for them to act up without Mum & Dad looking over their shoulder, or worse, to have to put up with people acting up without Mum & Dad looking over their shoulder.
As long as the students are attending their classes and they’re handing in their assingments etc, it really shouldn’t be any of the university’s concern whether the student is in the halls of residence or in a flat or at home with their parents, IMHO.
Hippy Hollow, I’ve found your posts in this thread quite fascinating. You certainly know your stuff. 
Heh, do Australian schools even have sports teams? I mean, there might be student clubs, but I haven’t heard of official organizations of any kind.
Thanks… I’m glad that’s how it comes across as I teach the history of higher education.
When people ask me “what the hell is the history of higher education?” I’ll point them to this thread.
Or he went to an elite school and has a more genteel view of the world.
I think Martini Enfield was closer to the mark and that students want to move away from mom and dad for the enriching experience of a 6-pack. Drive down High Street on Friday night in Columbus Ohio (next to Ohio State) and it looks like a garbage strike. That’s the reality of college life. Hippy Hollow is talking about $45,000 a year schools which are not the same as the $15,000 a year schools where dorms look more like a movie clip from Animal House. I think the experiences are probably different depending on the school.
I’m referring to his knowledge of how the university system evolved here in the U.S.
I grew up in a ‘party school’ college town. I’m very familiar with the Animal House aspects of it.
Point taken.
Animal House was based on Dartmouth where I went to grad school. It is part of the Ivy league and although I find that type of thing very immature it is something that mommies and daddys pony up $$$$$$ for it because it is part of the experience. You can never replicate again again later in life. Prestigious high-school boarding schools are a little more suspect in their parents motives but the intention is the same.
I should add that the ideal of the “American Dream” is to do whatever it takes to make your kids better than the previous generation and never stagnate. I have no idea whether this still holds but I see most middle and upper-class (lower class immigrants for that matter) families hold this as a wide-spread belief but I still many people following it, myself included. You always give your kids every opportunity and chance that they can possibly wish for.
I’m pretty sure I drank in college but I don’t remember.
Actually it was legal to drink at 18 when I went to school so we could buy beer on campus. The weekend benders were alive and well and not on campus.
I was the first in my family to go to college and I went to a state school. As I mentioned upthread, I took all of my scholarship money and put it towards paying for a dorm room… and I had to work two jobs to pay for it the next semester. Then I became an RA and got the next four years paid for.
I did go to an elite school for grad school, but I sure as hell didn’t live on campus.
I’m not sure what you’re getting at. There are a lot of schools that require students to live on campus (for the first year) and the reasons for the requirement aren’t solely financial. Dorms vary in quality and there is usually a correlation between price and quality.
I’ve worked at state schools with very modestly priced residence halls that were required for freshmen - and the cost was lower than the average apartment complex in town. Lots of residence halls have dining halls separate from them and students have a lot of options.
Right. Colleges operate in a market, and if other schools of comparable merit were able to get more students to attend by allowing them to live off campus, they would. The reality is a lot of students want the experience, and a lot of parents want the experience. Dartmouth has the rule in place because it’s part of the experience they’re selling, and they’re pretty certain that if you don’t want to adhere to the policy, they can fill your spot with somebody who will.
I worked at MIT for a few years. There was originally no rule about staying on campus, but after a number of high-profile deaths and suicides of 18 year olds living in Boston more or less unsupervised, they now require freshmen to live on campus. This happened in the late 90s - early 2000s.
Some campuses have apartment-style residences that provide more privacy but are still managed by the university. There’s usually several options available, from communal hostel type accommodations to ritzy suites.
I lived in a college when I went to a British university, but never in a dorm in any university I attended in the States.
At Kent State, I lived with my parents my freshman year, then rented a room in a shared house just off campus the next year. When I went to Denver after returning from the UK, I rented various apartments within walking/biking distance of UCD.
My premise was laid out in the first sentence, kids want to live on campus so they can view life through beer goggle classes. That a school would want a piece of the financial pie involved just makes cents.
I’m not buying the (and would not pay for) the idea that colleges insist on kids living on campus so they will experience “something special”. They want the money.