5 ms·

> every single student gets his own private sleeping area. That's unheard of in undergraduate Even in the UK, which is a lot poorer than the US, every undergra

> every single student gets his own private sleeping area. That's unheard of in undergraduate Even in the UK, which is a lot poorer than the US, every undergraduate has always gotten an individual bedroom. The idea of making adults share bedrooms is very bizarre. How do you have a relationship living like that?

lbriner 5y ago
Maybe college is about learning stuff and having a roomie to challenge and help you. I doubt the powers that be are worried about you wanting a long-term relationship. Remember that people having sex while not married has only been acceptable for perhaps 50 years to society, which post-dates many colelge buildings. There might be lots of people who want to dissuade people from "illicit liasons" by pairing them up in rooms to make things harder ;-)
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  > Maybe college is about learning stuff and having a roomie to challenge and help you. Learn with, challenge, and help you… in the bedroom?! You don’t need to sleep and get undressed in the same room as someone to study with them. > I doubt the powers that be are worried about you wanting a long-term relationship. When I was at Uni they made a big deal about how many people met their future partners there.
- Pasorrijer 5y ago
  Not to be nit-picky, but I'd just add the caveat "having sex while not married has become fashionable in the last 50 years, after a few hundred years of Catholic puritanism"... Sex outside of marriage has been extremely acceptable in many non-western societies at basically all stages of human development.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - pjc50 5y ago
    In the US religious context, "Catholic" and "Puritan" are mutually hostile, although neither is very keen on extramarital relationships.
- AlexandrB 5y ago
  For women having sex while not being married has been acceptable for ~50 years. For men, I think it was always acceptable - or at least accepted.
lordnacho 5y ago
Yeah I always thought this was a reasonably big difference with the US. What if you don't get along with your roommate? I'm all for communal living as a student, but you need some kind of space that's only yours, even if it's quite small. Btw some of the London unis do make people share. At least one friend plus my wife were having to share. Drives people nuts, especially if the other person has some issue like snoring or excessive partying.
snakeboy 5y ago
He's exaggerating (or maybe it's the case at UCSB), since it's usually only true for first year undergraduate (among "traditional" students starting right high school. I think older students usually live off campus). As for relationships, most people end their high school relationship before college, or the two go to a different college, so it's long distance. I actually found it formative to be forced to share that space and resolve (inevitable) tensions that arise. And since it's usually randomized, you end up with someone you might not have normally met. Of course some people have bad experiences, and can request re-assignment.
- cjrp 5y ago
  I'd say I got similar benefits living on a shared corridor (single kitchen, bathroom, etc. between 8 individual bedrooms). Sharing a bedroom still just seems bizarre.
- chriskanan 5y ago
  It is definitely university specific. When I was an undergraduate in Oklahoma in the early 2000s, Freshmen had to share dorms but after that one could pay extra to not share the room, although the bathroom was still shared. However, when I was at USC for my MS housing was extremely limited and while there were a handful of single-person dorms, almost everyone had 2+ person setups and even then it was like winning a lottery ticket to get any on campus housing at all. Later during my PhD at UCSD, it was again enormously difficult to get any on campus housing and I had roommates in campus housing for 6 years. There wasn't another option. Maybe things have changed, but when I was an undergraduate in Oklahoma in the early 2000s
  - chrisseaton 5y ago
    You had to share rooms as a grown-man doctoral student for six years? That's absolutely bonkers. Why would we ask anyone to do that? How can someone have an adult life like that?
    - chriskanan 5y ago
      It wasn't fun. Rent was $800 per month on an income of $1800 per month for a 2 bedroom university apartment. I was considered lucky to get such a sweet deal, since off campus housing was more money with greater commuting requirements, but graduate students all make the same amount.
LatteLazy 5y ago
I think the whole idea is to stop you having relationships...
rendall 5y ago
It's bullshit. Your own dorm room is not "unheard of" in the US. Depends on the school. Undergrad freshmen almost always have a roommate, and seniors almost never. My undergrad experience: by policy, freshmen had roommates, sophomores and above lived alone unless they wanted a roommate.
- DennisP 5y ago
  And my experience was that I had a roommate all four years. But that was back in the 80s. Maybe that's one reason student debts have gotten higher.
  - rendall 5y ago
    Yes. It's very important to hear from everyone who had roommates all 4 years of undergrad. No one could have guessed that someone had that experience.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
ZiiS 5y ago
The top 1% heavily skews the mean, the UK's "median wealth per adult" is 165% of the US $132k vs $79k [1]. [1] https://www.credit-suisse.com/media/assets/corporate/docs/about-us/research/publications/global-wealth-databook-2021.pdf https://www.credit-suisse.com/media/assets/corporate/docs/ab...
- notahacker 5y ago
  Interesting, but also not a perfect guide since that UK median wealth is mostly held in more expensive housing, which parents of university-age kids are often still paying mortgages on, and the students will take longer still to own And US university education itself is much more expensive. Genuinely bizarre how when something often costs six figures, shared bedrooms are the norm and eliminating windows is seen as a viable alternative. Still, you have better college sports teams I guess...
  - chrisseaton 5y ago
    > Still, you have better college sports teams I guess... I've heard these are actually normally a net income source, not an expenditure!
pjc50 5y ago
At Cambridge we had a great compromise in the form of a "double set", in a building built in 1825: two very small private bedrooms, which share a lounge. A floor of the building had two or three of these, which then share a kitchen.
- GordonS 5y ago
  Where I went in Aberdeen, each floot had a 6 small, private bedrooms, and a shared, combined kitchen/lounge area (which was also pretty small). I would have absolutely hated it if I'd had to share a bedroom with someone else! Aside from generally wanting my own space with privacy, how the hell is that supposed to work when you're bringing sexual partners back to your room?!
  - DennisP 5y ago
    If you come home and find a handwritten sign on your bedroom door, you sleep in that lounge area. Aside from that, you either work out an arrangement or everybody gets comfortable with one roommate and their partner having sex as quietly as possible under the covers while the other tries to sleep.
    - GordonS 5y ago
      That's crazy - you'd end up taking it in turns sleeping in the lounge every other night! Plus the lounge is supposed to be for everyone to use, not as a dormitory for those exiled from their own rooms!
      - DennisP 5y ago
        It wasn't that bad. The sign was just for surprise situations. Everybody knew that if you abused the sign, your roommate was entirely within their rights to just walk in. I did four years in shared rooms, and basically everybody figures out how to cooperate and work things out.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
Tenoke 5y ago
Not true. I got a shared room 10 years ago as an undergraduate in the University of London and I'd have much prefered a private windowless one.
misnome 5y ago
> Even in the UK, ...., every undergraduate has always gotten an individual bedroom This is mostly true but not universal - when I was in UG accommodation in the mid-2000 it was indeed mostly individual, but there was also some small fraction of shared rooms available, that were a little cheaper than my (probably somewhat subsidised) £50/week individual room.
MattPalmer1086 5y ago
Not when I went to university in the UK! Had to share a dorm room in my first year. I moved I to shared private rental flats after that.
Sharlin 5y ago
Yeah. In Finland these days the most common mode of student living is an individual studio. Sharing the same flat (common kitchen/living room, individual bedrooms) used to be more common but they’re really falling out of favor. Sharing the same bedroom? That’s just unthinkable and only happens in US movies and TV series.
- dijereedan 5y ago
  I shared a dormitory bedroom with my friend. I studied at a Canadian University. Wasn't unusual at all.
  - Sharlin 5y ago
    I guess Canada can be lumped with the US in this case :) The whole concept of a “dormitory” is simply foreign here outside of hostels and niche boarding schools. Student housing is mostly normal-looking apartment buildings.
Clubber 5y ago
When I went to school in the 90s, as a freshman, we had 3 students to a single room (at least mine). 1 bunk bed, one single bed. I remember it was normally 2 to a room but we had overcrowding issues at time time. It was fine, I didn't have any issues with my roommates, but I didn't hang out with them much either. When you're that close, you learn how to get along with anyone. We were freshman and didn't spend a lot of time in our room anyway. We would study in the library and hang out in our friend's rooms, or outside. I moved to off-campus housing after a couple of years and kinda regretted it. Our dorm was men on the bottom two floors and women on the top two floors. It was a lot of fun, I remember the time fondly.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
rwmj 5y ago
I shared a room with an unrelated adult every year I was an undergraduate in the UK, and saved a lot of money in the process. Those were the days - long gone - when you could rent a room in central London for £60/week, I paid more like £30-40. Some students had 3 to a room.
rickspencer3 5y ago
I would have eagerly accepted a windowless room for myself rather than having a roommate my first year in college, and I know my roommate would have been much better off without having to share a room with a jackass like I was when I was 18. My children each suffered in different ways from being forced to share a bedroom with someone when they entered college as well. In my completely layman opinion, I think that the shared living space with private bedroom (even windowless) is a sensible compromise that will result in a better quality of life for the students there.
almeria 5y ago
The idea of making adults share bedrooms is very bizarre. True, but if you're asking why anyone would put up with that -- it has something to do with money.
amyjess 5y ago
Some universities in the US have apartments instead of dorms at least. I went to UT Dallas (graduated 2007), where they have apartments. Freshman apartments are 4-bedroom units with each student getting their own bedroom (and pairs of students sharing a bathroom), and apartments available to others are mostly 1-2 bedroom units (with each student getting their own bathroom) with a few 4-bedroom units scattered around. With that said, I did hear that after I graduated they added dorms for freshmen, but I also heard that the dorms all had single rooms, with the only difference between the dorms and the apartments was that the dorms had communal bathrooms. For what it's worth, I would not have gone to any school where I would've had to share a bedroom. I'm an intensely private person, and if I couldn't go to college anywhere I wouldn't have to share a bedroom I'd just have entered the workforce at 18 and continued living with my parents till I could afford to move out.
ushtaritk421 5y ago
I and most people I went to school with (BYU 2007-2011) shared a room for at least part of their college years. For me, it was worth it for ~30% lower rent

lbriner 5y ago

Maybe college is about learning stuff and having a roomie to challenge and help you. I doubt the powers that be are worried about you wanting a long-term relationship. Remember that people having sex while not married has only been acceptable for perhaps 50 years to society, which post-dates many colelge buildings. There might be lots of people who want to dissuade people from "illicit liasons" by pairing them up in rooms to make things harder ;-)

chrisseaton 5y ago
> Maybe college is about learning stuff and having a roomie to challenge and help you. Learn with, challenge, and help you… in the bedroom?! You don’t need to sleep and get undressed in the same room as someone to study with them. > I doubt the powers that be are worried about you wanting a long-term relationship. When I was at Uni they made a big deal about how many people met their future partners there.
Pasorrijer 5y ago
Not to be nit-picky, but I'd just add the caveat "having sex while not married has become fashionable in the last 50 years, after a few hundred years of Catholic puritanism"... Sex outside of marriage has been extremely acceptable in many non-western societies at basically all stages of human development.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- pjc50 5y ago
  In the US religious context, "Catholic" and "Puritan" are mutually hostile, although neither is very keen on extramarital relationships.
AlexandrB 5y ago
For women having sex while not being married has been acceptable for ~50 years. For men, I think it was always acceptable - or at least accepted.

lordnacho 5y ago

Yeah I always thought this was a reasonably big difference with the US. What if you don't get along with your roommate? I'm all for communal living as a student, but you need some kind of space that's only yours, even if it's quite small. Btw some of the London unis do make people share. At least one friend plus my wife were having to share. Drives people nuts, especially if the other person has some issue like snoring or excessive partying.

snakeboy 5y ago

He's exaggerating (or maybe it's the case at UCSB), since it's usually only true for first year undergraduate (among "traditional" students starting right high school. I think older students usually live off campus). As for relationships, most people end their high school relationship before college, or the two go to a different college, so it's long distance. I actually found it formative to be forced to share that space and resolve (inevitable) tensions that arise. And since it's usually randomized, you end up with someone you might not have normally met. Of course some people have bad experiences, and can request re-assignment.

cjrp 5y ago
I'd say I got similar benefits living on a shared corridor (single kitchen, bathroom, etc. between 8 individual bedrooms). Sharing a bedroom still just seems bizarre.
chriskanan 5y ago
It is definitely university specific. When I was an undergraduate in Oklahoma in the early 2000s, Freshmen had to share dorms but after that one could pay extra to not share the room, although the bathroom was still shared. However, when I was at USC for my MS housing was extremely limited and while there were a handful of single-person dorms, almost everyone had 2+ person setups and even then it was like winning a lottery ticket to get any on campus housing at all. Later during my PhD at UCSD, it was again enormously difficult to get any on campus housing and I had roommates in campus housing for 6 years. There wasn't another option. Maybe things have changed, but when I was an undergraduate in Oklahoma in the early 2000s
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  You had to share rooms as a grown-man doctoral student for six years? That's absolutely bonkers. Why would we ask anyone to do that? How can someone have an adult life like that?
  - chriskanan 5y ago
    It wasn't fun. Rent was $800 per month on an income of $1800 per month for a 2 bedroom university apartment. I was considered lucky to get such a sweet deal, since off campus housing was more money with greater commuting requirements, but graduate students all make the same amount.

LatteLazy 5y ago

I think the whole idea is to stop you having relationships...

rendall 5y ago

It's bullshit. Your own dorm room is not "unheard of" in the US. Depends on the school. Undergrad freshmen almost always have a roommate, and seniors almost never. My undergrad experience: by policy, freshmen had roommates, sophomores and above lived alone unless they wanted a roommate.

DennisP 5y ago
And my experience was that I had a roommate all four years. But that was back in the 80s. Maybe that's one reason student debts have gotten higher.
- rendall 5y ago
  Yes. It's very important to hear from everyone who had roommates all 4 years of undergrad. No one could have guessed that someone had that experience.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

ZiiS 5y ago

The top 1% heavily skews the mean, the UK's "median wealth per adult" is 165% of the US $132k vs $79k [1]. [1] https://www.credit-suisse.com/media/assets/corporate/docs/about-us/research/publications/global-wealth-databook-2021.pdf https://www.credit-suisse.com/media/assets/corporate/docs/ab...

notahacker 5y ago
Interesting, but also not a perfect guide since that UK median wealth is mostly held in more expensive housing, which parents of university-age kids are often still paying mortgages on, and the students will take longer still to own And US university education itself is much more expensive. Genuinely bizarre how when something often costs six figures, shared bedrooms are the norm and eliminating windows is seen as a viable alternative. Still, you have better college sports teams I guess...
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  > Still, you have better college sports teams I guess... I've heard these are actually normally a net income source, not an expenditure!

pjc50 5y ago

At Cambridge we had a great compromise in the form of a "double set", in a building built in 1825: two very small private bedrooms, which share a lounge. A floor of the building had two or three of these, which then share a kitchen.

GordonS 5y ago
Where I went in Aberdeen, each floot had a 6 small, private bedrooms, and a shared, combined kitchen/lounge area (which was also pretty small). I would have absolutely hated it if I'd had to share a bedroom with someone else! Aside from generally wanting my own space with privacy, how the hell is that supposed to work when you're bringing sexual partners back to your room?!
- DennisP 5y ago
  If you come home and find a handwritten sign on your bedroom door, you sleep in that lounge area. Aside from that, you either work out an arrangement or everybody gets comfortable with one roommate and their partner having sex as quietly as possible under the covers while the other tries to sleep.
  - GordonS 5y ago
    That's crazy - you'd end up taking it in turns sleeping in the lounge every other night! Plus the lounge is supposed to be for everyone to use, not as a dormitory for those exiled from their own rooms!
    - DennisP 5y ago
      It wasn't that bad. The sign was just for surprise situations. Everybody knew that if you abused the sign, your roommate was entirely within their rights to just walk in. I did four years in shared rooms, and basically everybody figures out how to cooperate and work things out.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]

Tenoke 5y ago

Not true. I got a shared room 10 years ago as an undergraduate in the University of London and I'd have much prefered a private windowless one.

misnome 5y ago

> Even in the UK, ...., every undergraduate has always gotten an individual bedroom This is mostly true but not universal - when I was in UG accommodation in the mid-2000 it was indeed mostly individual, but there was also some small fraction of shared rooms available, that were a little cheaper than my (probably somewhat subsidised) £50/week individual room.

MattPalmer1086 5y ago

Not when I went to university in the UK! Had to share a dorm room in my first year. I moved I to shared private rental flats after that.

Sharlin 5y ago

Yeah. In Finland these days the most common mode of student living is an individual studio. Sharing the same flat (common kitchen/living room, individual bedrooms) used to be more common but they’re really falling out of favor. Sharing the same bedroom? That’s just unthinkable and only happens in US movies and TV series.

dijereedan 5y ago
I shared a dormitory bedroom with my friend. I studied at a Canadian University. Wasn't unusual at all.
- Sharlin 5y ago
  I guess Canada can be lumped with the US in this case :) The whole concept of a “dormitory” is simply foreign here outside of hostels and niche boarding schools. Student housing is mostly normal-looking apartment buildings.

Clubber 5y ago

When I went to school in the 90s, as a freshman, we had 3 students to a single room (at least mine). 1 bunk bed, one single bed. I remember it was normally 2 to a room but we had overcrowding issues at time time. It was fine, I didn't have any issues with my roommates, but I didn't hang out with them much either. When you're that close, you learn how to get along with anyone. We were freshman and didn't spend a lot of time in our room anyway. We would study in the library and hang out in our friend's rooms, or outside. I moved to off-campus housing after a couple of years and kinda regretted it. Our dorm was men on the bottom two floors and women on the top two floors. It was a lot of fun, I remember the time fondly.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

rwmj 5y ago

I shared a room with an unrelated adult every year I was an undergraduate in the UK, and saved a lot of money in the process. Those were the days - long gone - when you could rent a room in central London for £60/week, I paid more like £30-40. Some students had 3 to a room.

rickspencer3 5y ago

I would have eagerly accepted a windowless room for myself rather than having a roommate my first year in college, and I know my roommate would have been much better off without having to share a room with a jackass like I was when I was 18. My children each suffered in different ways from being forced to share a bedroom with someone when they entered college as well. In my completely layman opinion, I think that the shared living space with private bedroom (even windowless) is a sensible compromise that will result in a better quality of life for the students there.

almeria 5y ago

The idea of making adults share bedrooms is very bizarre. True, but if you're asking why anyone would put up with that -- it has something to do with money.

amyjess 5y ago

Some universities in the US have apartments instead of dorms at least. I went to UT Dallas (graduated 2007), where they have apartments. Freshman apartments are 4-bedroom units with each student getting their own bedroom (and pairs of students sharing a bathroom), and apartments available to others are mostly 1-2 bedroom units (with each student getting their own bathroom) with a few 4-bedroom units scattered around. With that said, I did hear that after I graduated they added dorms for freshmen, but I also heard that the dorms all had single rooms, with the only difference between the dorms and the apartments was that the dorms had communal bathrooms. For what it's worth, I would not have gone to any school where I would've had to share a bedroom. I'm an intensely private person, and if I couldn't go to college anywhere I wouldn't have to share a bedroom I'd just have entered the workforce at 18 and continued living with my parents till I could afford to move out.

ushtaritk421 5y ago

I and most people I went to school with (BYU 2007-2011) shared a room for at least part of their college years. For me, it was worth it for ~30% lower rent