Many schools with the freshman dorm requirement will waive it if the student is living with at least one parent or guardian within a certain number of miles, and students who are married and/or have children and/or over a certain age (usually about 20) do not have to live in the dorm either.
My post is your cite. 
MIT had restrictions until about 1967, just before I arrived, and the first time I visited my now wife at her dorm in early 1972 they still had those rules. By late 1972 they finally disappeared. And co-ed dorms were just being proposed at the time.
Depends on where you are. When I went to college you could stay in dorms all four years, but today in lot of state schools you get kicked out pretty quickly. I think private schools let you stay longer.
Just to provide a foreign (Australian) perspective: There was no mention of accommodation at all when I was at uni here. That was up to the individual students to sort out, and whilst the campus did have “Student Accommodation” it was for the international and way out of town students (as in, people from the outback). Everyone else just got a flat somewhere (or stayed at home with their parents).
I was a prof at a college that implemented this rule while I was there. Trying to “reason” with the people in favor of it was impossible.
Their line: When I was a student, living on campus was sooooo wonderful that I insist that everyone else must “enjoy” the same experience I had.
Nevermind that other people might have other concepts on what they may or may not enjoy. For me, the idea of living on campus would be a horrendous nightmare. But these people were completely selfabsorbed and were unable to imagine other people having other feelings about such things.
Since they were in the majority/control, they won out. This and many other such instances of forcing other people to “enjoy” their preferences is the reason I left the place.
This is one of my classic 51/49 examples. Suppose 51% of people are in favor of forcing people to live on campus? Is that okay to override the choice of the 49%? Yes? Well, what if is 51/49 the other way. 51% thought living on campus should not be allowed? Should that 51% force the other 49% to not live on campus? No? Umm, why not? The premise is the same, right?
A secondary reason was that they were getting pleas from parents asking for this rule because the students were demanding that the parents let them live off campus and the parents were too wimpy to say “no” directly. They wanted us to play bad cop.
Note that these rules severely hurt a lot of students who live in the area, have relatives they can stay with, or can’t afford dorm living but can afford cheap apartment sharing. We knew someone who went to college like this. Lived in town. They wanted her to live on campus. Blah, blah, blah. Switched to a different college.
It is a horrible, idiotic, stupid rule that benefits no one. There are no rules for where 18 year olds have to live if they aren’t going to college. Why do colleges treat their students worse than others?
My school moved to a 4 year on-campus residency requirement starting with the year under me. There was a mechanism for getting to live off campus and I’m pretty sure it existed to give them a way to keep the troublemaking students on campus.
The student handbook for my alma mater explicitly states that their housing policy “is based on the belief that residence hall living enhances education by contributing to an individual’s academic, social, and personal development.” (Their policy is that all first-year students must spend their first two semesters in the dorms, and all transfer students must spend one semester.) So, basically, assimilation into college life, broadly defined.
Some schools work with private companies to build privately-owned housing on or near campus. Sometimes, these deals mean that the school will take ownership of the buildings after some time (25 years, say). Educational Realty Trust is one such company.
Often such housing is more luxurious and expensive than the school-owned dorms. And actually, in general, student housing has gotten more luxurious over the years. Formerly dorms required students to share rooms, and use hall bathrooms, perhaps with shared showers. Now many dorms have private bedrooms (even if in suites) and private or semi-private bathrooms. There are study rooms, much like the conference rooms in your office building.
Retention retention retention. The number of students who drop out or transfer before graduation – usually between freshman and sophomore year – is a HUGE issue in higher ed. At most colleges, administrators are under pressure to improve retention rates. Living on campus is correlated with higher retention at that institution (though not necessarily better academic performance). The thinking is that requiring students to live on campus = better social networks and a greater sense of connection to the institution = more students sticking around.
I’m not especially convinced by this, since it’s hard to tell which way the cause-and-effect relationships run. It could be that students who feel a greater sense of connection to the institution are more likely to want to live on campus in the first place; or it could be that commuter students are a different population in other ways that make them more likely to drop out (e.g., less financially secure). But when people are looking for a simple solution to the retention problem, one of the first ideas that comes up is usually requiring students to live on campus – especially in some of the fancier new “learning community” arrangements, where a cohort of students both lives and takes classes together.
What do colleges do when they have freshman that are much older? In theory someone can start a bachelor’s degree at any age. What happens when they get a 45 year old freshman or maybe even a retiree who wants to “go to college”? To some extent, nontraditional, distributed, and online schools like U of Phoenix specialize in this market, but surely some mature adults might want to do the on campus thing at UIUC, Michigan State, Virginia Tech, or whatever your favorite traditional college is. Would they even be allowed to live in dorms with 17 and 18 year olds?
In case it isn’t clear yet from this thread, there may be a number of different rationales at different institutions.
My alma mater (Carleton College) required/s all freshmen to live on campus (no exceptions—my freshman year roommate was a townie), basically because they want to maintain their identity as pretty much the opposite of a commuter campus. Much of campus social life revolved around dorm life (and, more generally, things that were happening on campus), and it wasn’t unusual for students to live on campus all four years. Freshman had to live in the dorms so that they would be fully a part of campus life, assimilated into the campus community. (And no, there wasn’t much in loco parenting or indoctrination involved; you could get away with quite a bit while living in the dorms.)
You have a legitimate gripe about changing the rules. But for a college with such a rule already in place, if “the idea of living on campus would be a horrendous nightmare” to you, you just wouldn’t choose to go there, any more than you’d choose to attend a college that was located in a small town if the idea of living in a small town appalled you.
I wouldn’t bet on this. I’ve actually been in two situations (one an athletic competition and the other training at my agency’s training academy) where mature adults preferred to pay for hotel rooms and meals out of pocket rather than accept the free dorm and meal accommodations.
I’ve seen news stories over the years about a middle-aged person who lived in the dorm, usually because they were renting out their house, which was too far away to commute. Waivers exist for precisely this reason.
I went back to school at age 23 and transferred to a 4-year college at 26, and did not have to live in the dorms. I was also exempt from having to take gym classes because I enrolled after age 21.
My unmarried nephew-by-marriage is about 30 years old and currently at that same school, and he lives in an apartment that was family housing when I went there. The buildings are still owned by the college, and are available to any student 21 or over regardless of marital or other family status. As people move out, they’re stripping the apartments and demolishing the buildings as they vacate.
I have no clue what the policy is now, but when I went to UW-Platteville Freshman and Sophomores had to live on campus (unless they lived nearby with family, and I think there was a married exemption)
Personally I did not mind living in the dorms - no washing dishes, no cooking, no utility bills, etc. I did spend two summers off campus which was OK (I had a lighter academic load).
Brian
But if you live near that college, and it’s the only one nearby that has a quality program in your area of interest, this is a real problem.
Again, waaaay too many people think that there is something magical about a bunch of 18 year olds living together that create some sort of special bond. It doesn’t for a lot of people. Those people have to be given the choice of opting out of the mythical magic. If you think it’s real, good for you. Just let everyone else alone.
One of my kids tried out dorm life for a couple years. The “culture” of the dorms was a complete mess. Drinking, noise, theft, general vandalism (which everyone had to pay for) and on and on. Then moved off campus into houses with friends where things went really, really well.
All I think is that this is something that should be an option, not forced on people. No more than forcing people to not live in dorms would be. What is so freaking wrong with that?
My nephew, who is a sophomore now, chose the “substance-free” dorm when he went to college. I think that would be quieter and more sober than many dorms.
In one of those weird “you never know what information will help people stalk you” coincidences…I was that “townie” roommate (I’m sure, I checked your date of birth and e-mail address).
And yes, the reason Carleton gave was that it encouraged community. I’m sure it also gave them an excuse to sell more meal plans with the Cream Cheese flavored Jello in them.
I chose my university in part because it had a requirement to spend 1-2 years on campus. I specifically did not want to go to a commuter campus where people showed up on campus for class and left to get on with their lives. I wanted to feel like a part of a community that was focused pretty solidity on academia, not a loose assortment of people that happen to share a classroom.
My campus did a good job of it. Each dorm (or “college”, in their terminology) has a shared core course for freshman, and a full schedule of on-campus activities and classes running after hours. The dorms were lightly themed, so you were likely to run into people with similar interests. And they were set up so that dorm rooms were mixed in with classrooms, offices and resources. It was pretty all encompassing, and while I hated sharing a room, I loved the rest of it.
I do think dorms are a bit of an equalizer. Yes, there are some singles and some quad rooms, but dorm life forces a bunch of people from all over to meet on fairly neutral terms, and that’s a good thing in general for a campus. For low income students, I think one of the big values is getting you out of your milleu- away from your buddies working their way up to shift manager at McDonalds, away from your shady boyfriend who isn’t supportive of your personal growth, and away from your mom who can’t understand why you spend so much time studying and so little time watching your siblings. Being thrust into a completely different dynamic can be absolutely transformative.
You sound quite angry about this!
If the college that you describe (the only one nearby with the quality program in your area of interest) is really all that wonderful, then why not suck it up and do the year or two in the dorms? Any time you choose a college you’re engaging in trade-offs: I like this one’s programs but it’s associated with the evangelical church, I love that one but geez it’s expensive, I like this one but I don’t know that I want to live so far north, this one has the major I want but not the minor–etc. If the college is that perfect in every other respect, then you go.
(I certainly didn’t love my time in the dorms, especially not freshman year, but neither did it warp me–and it’s hard for me to see how anybody could be permanently damaged by spending a year on campus.)
Or if the housing issue is really a dealbreaker, then go someplace that’s a little further away, or a little less quality, or a little less in-your-area-of-interest. That’s entirely legitimate. But just as a college has the right to offer certain programs and not others, or makes the choice to allow Greek life or not, or decides whether it is a Christian college or not, it has the right to decide on how students will live.
If one college doesn’t seem ideal, there are dozens and dozens of others. “Gee, I wish small rural liberal-arts college Y, which is three blocks from my home, was actually in the middle of Big City X, had 5,000 more students, twice as much racial diversity, and offered a program in Old Norse Welding” --well, maybe you’re better off looking for a college that really meets your needs.
BTW, there are plenty of colleges that don’t require, or even allow, freshmen to live in dorms. My daughter’s community college was one such. Most community colleges don’t have dorms, or have dorms for only a small number of students.
This is all based on the assumption that people have unlimited resources to attend college. A lot of people don’t. A lot. I certainly didn’t.
One of the big state schools here requires frosh to live on campus. Even if you already live there with your family. And there is no school of any quality for quite a ways. (The big school sort of squelched any other school doing well in the area over a century ago.) None of the other major state schools have such a requirement, of course.
So this results in a major financial hit for quite a few people that serves no purposes whatsoever. It is stupidity, and stupidity coming from a seat of higher education no less. Supposedly smart people making stupid rules is worthy of contempt.