Why have double rooms in residence?

One of the little known differences between Canada and the U.K. is the design of university residence rooms.

Rooms in British university residences are usually singles.

Canadian universities typically have a mix, including a good number of double rooms, with the percentage of doubles varying from campus to campus.

Students, typically, prefer singles to doubles. So why have double rooms in residence?

One obvious explanation is economic: double rooms might be cheaper to build. But that doesn't explain why double rooms are so much more common in Canada than in the U.K., or the variation in the percentage of double rooms across the country.

Another explanation is that benevolent university administrators don't want students to be lonely, and so put them in double rooms so that they're sure to have at least one friend on campus. I'm not convinced by that explanation either. 

A final explanation is that double rooms are a contraceptive device.

The oldest English university, Oxford, was an all-male institution for about 782 years, with the first women's college being established in 1878. The second-oldest university, Cambridge, was all-male for 660 years, admitting women in 1869. Combine an all-male student body and formidable old college buildings with guarded entrances, and there is little need to worry about students getting pregnant.

Today there are many universities in Britain other than Oxford and Cambridge, and almost all universities are completely co-educational. Yet history establishes norms and practices - what university would want to house their students in double rooms if Oxbridge students have single rooms?

Canadian universities, by way of contrast, have a much longer tradition of educating men and women together. For example, one of University of Toronto's oldest colleges, Victoria, has admitted both male and female students since its founding in 1836, and built its first female residence in 1903. 

True, single-sex dorms and the presence of residence fellows help to keep female undergraduates safe from harm. But nothing puts a damper on romance more effectively than a roommate.

It might sound far-fetched. 

Yet prior to the pill (and the legalization of abortion) women's lives were constrained by the fear of unwanted pregnancy in a way that is hard for today's undergraduates to imagine. A broken condom, a drunken moment, a small miscalculation - and your life would never be the same. So people's - and especially women's - lives were structured to help them resist temptation (a nudge, if you will).

And here's one small piece of supporting evidence: the only English university that I've visited with double rooms in residence was St Hilda's college - which was, until recently, all-female. 

Which theory do you think provides the best explanation of the prevalence of double rooms in Canadian residences: economics, benevolent administrators, birth control device - or just historical accident?

Comments

[Determinant]

Most Canadian residences date from after WWII, in fact most date from 1950 - 1975 when Universities expanded rapidly. At my own university I can show you the trend to smaller rooms, our 1970's residences are sardine cans compared to the 1950's ones. It was money combined with demand, or rather a boom-and-bust cycle.

After the 1970's residence construction slowed considerably. At that time came the latest innovation: Apartment Residences. Usually for upper-year students. So the Residence market segmented into apartments for upper-years and double rooms for Frosh.

But then another thing happened: the great pushing of upper-years off-campus. It has been the trend in Canadian universities to guarantee a room to First-years. First-Year Experience and all that. It's advertising. Once they have you enrolled and since transferring universities isn't easy, they don't care about your living arrangements. Hence the move to reserve 80% of residence beds for Frosh. Upper-years were left to seek off-campus accommodation.

Having seen the operation of university advertising and all the first-year gimmicks in person, I can say that once they have your tuition fees, they stop caring about you so much. It really is that venal.

The great push of upper-years off campus was underpinned by the fact that provincial governments no longer paid for residence construction and that was followed by declining education budgets generally. Persistent university deficits left many universities focusing on enrolment growth as a solution to their problems.

[Daphne Millar]

I attended one of the new universities built in Britain in the 1960's and in my first year there were virtually no halls of residences. Most people were put two to a room in hotels in the town, which at that time had big summer tourist traffic but little in winter. Fortunately, this had virtually no impact on the amount of sex but did encourage relationship-building with your room mate so she would be out at the pictures or with her boyfriend at the right time.
This did require planning and it did sometimes involve problems when a chain of arrangements broke, but it worked OK. People moved into flats as soon as possible.
Halls of Residence as they were built all had single rooms. Initially, they tried to impose a rule that if two people of the opposite sex were on a bed together, at least three feet had to be in contact with the ground. Obviously this is not a binding constraint.

[Frances Woolley]

Daphne - thanks for sharing that story.

Determinant - "Most Canadian residences date from after WWII, in fact most date from 1950 - 1975"

I don't know about that - Carleton, for example, has had a huge wave of residence building in the last 10 years, UBC has also greatly built up their number of residence rooms, McGill has acquiring old hotels and turned them into residences, as has U of T. Then of course the older universities have old residences as well.

By the way, the stats really back up the idea that guaranteeing a room to first years is important. The most vulnerable first year students are those living off campus away from home - it's harder for them to make friends and figure out what's going on, they have to cope with cooking, commuting, etc. I'm all for giving first year students high priority.

Modern residence designs are different, as residences are an increasingly important profit centres for universities. Not only is there money to be made on rooms and meal plans, but also residences can be rented out in summer as budget hotel or conference accommodation (this is why I've stayed in so many different residences in both countries). So modern residences are designed with profit-potential in mind.

Interestingly enough, in Waterloo, there are a number of privately built and operated off-campus residence-style buildings, a trend that I've also seen in Exeter in the UK. These aren't old-style student-ghetto buildings, but rather new and shiny apartment blocks.

[tomslee]

I lean towards economics. The enrollments at UK universities were, until recently, so much lower than Canadian ones that a single room for all first years was a possibility (it was guaranteed at Sussex in the late '70s is my data point).

But the contraception argument is a possibility too. Canadian universities are more paternalistic than British; in particular the use of single-sex residences or single-sex floors in residences. It seems far more common for residences in the UK to be mixed -- I remember being shocked that residences at McMaster were single-sex after being at Sussex -- and double rooms probably go together with single-sex residences.

[Frances Woolley]

Determinant - remember, also, that the birth control pill was introduced in 1962, but was hard for unmarried women to get for a while, and access to abortion was limited in parts of the country right through the 60s and 70s, so the contraception issue was very much in play for a large part of the 1950 to 1975 period. Interestingly, it's in the 1960s that you start to see some of the important innovations in residence design, e.g. Gage Towers at UBC with its 4 or 6 singles in one big apartment.

Tom - "I lean towards economics." - The funding models are also very different, with Canadian university accommodation being largely paid for by parents/students, but British university accommodation (for a while there anyways) being paid for indirectly by government via student grants. But I'm not sure which way that would go, i.e. towards singles or doubles.

[Erik Davis]

Always the economist: what you have there is a plausible theory. Some evidence to support it would be beneficial in such a situation. I'm sure somewhere in various university archives are minutes from the planning sessions for those residences...

[Livio Di Matteo]

Canada is often always an amalgam of British and American practices. I would have thought British university residences evolved from the medieval monastic cells - hence a tradition towards singles. I have no evidence for this but it is Sunday morning and it sounds good. What were the Americans doing with their university residences? We probably had more double rooms because it was cheaper to cram more students in but as well it may have been what the Anericans were doing in their residences. Again, no evidence, just speculation.

[Frances Woolley]

Erik Davis. "I'm sure somewhere in various university archives are minutes from the planning sessions"

Perhaps. If they are there, and if the issue even came up, I have a pretty good idea of what will be in the minutes:

"A lengthy discussion followed."

Livio, the monastic cells idea is an interesting one. Historically did nuns live in single cells, too, or in shared rooms?

[hosertohoosier]

I find the social capital argument compelling, although I think you trivialize it by describing it at as somebody "getting at least one friend". You don't just get one friend, you become a part of their social network. This is unavoidable because people often meet their other friends in one another's dorms. Even if its just friends of friends, those can often be valuable (social network analysis has found that people are most likely to get jobs through friends of friends). What is more, people don't live in the same room each year - they move around. So while it sounds like it would be a small thing, double rooms could substantially increase the ability of people to network.

This, again, is not a trivial advantage. Why would somebody send their kids to Oxbridge circa 1700? Was there any demand for educated people in the economy? If there were, would the kind of people sending their kids to Oxbridge want to be engineers or doctors? No, the principle advantage of a university is that it would allow people to build extensive networks across families. Double rooms extended that advantage, particularly for shyer scions. After all, it is worth noting that British boarding schools also have/had students bunk collectively, even though those kids were far too young to be getting people pregnant (and its not that hard to deny paternal responsibilities when its your word against a scullery maid anyhow).

[Leo]

It might be to shame people into doing housework. If you're alone, it might be ok to let dishes pile up into mice-infested towers, but having a roommate will motivate you to keep the room clean.

[W. Peden]

One possible problem with this thesis is that several UK universities are about as old as Oxford and Cambridge. The University St. Andrews was founded in the 15th century, as were Glasgow and Aberdeen; Edinburgh University was founded in the 16th century.

Women first came to St. Andrews in the 19th century and were housed separately soon afterwards. I don't know about the history of women at the other Scottish universities, but I imagine there was a similar pattern. So it was perhaps less imitation than similar biological pressures, in Scotland at least.

The tendency towards single rooms does seem like it would be partly economic in Scotland, though. Obviously, Scotland historically had a very large number of universities in proportion to students. Also, until the 19th century, most Scottish students (and I imagine English students as well) were very young (David Hume was 12 when he first entered Edinburgh university; it's interesting to note that the Wealth of Nations was based on lecture notes delivered to boys in their mid-teens!) which may have some relevance to the analysis.

[Min]

Determinant: "Having seen the operation of university advertising and all the first-year gimmicks in person, I can say that once they have your tuition fees, they stop caring about you so much. It really is that venal."

Venal? You mean rational, right? ;)

[Min]

Livio di Matteo: "I would have thought British university residences evolved from the medieval monastic cells - hence a tradition towards singles."

Interesting idea. :)

hosertohoosier: "No, the principle advantage of a university is that it would allow people to build extensive networks across families."

Another interesting idea. :)

Is class a factor historically in England? Hundreds of years ago, were not university students from the upper crust, or being groomed to enter the upper crust? As such, would privacy not be a value? Also, they would have less need for social networks than today's middle class students.

[W. Peden]

Min,

"Is class a factor historically in England?"

Not much more than any other country. We just talk about it more. Hence the great anecdote about the two Oxford colleagues, reunited at a seminar: one of them asks the other, an American, who has been studying in America for 20 years, what he has been studying-

"I've been studying the survival of the American class system."

"I didn't know that you had one."

"That's right, nobody does- that's why it survives."

Quite why the British class system survive in the face of our obsession with it is a further interesting sociological question...

[Determinant]

Frances wrote:

"By the way, the stats really back up the idea that guaranteeing a room to first years is important. The most vulnerable first year students are those living off campus away from home - it's harder for them to make friends and figure out what's going on, they have to cope with cooking, commuting, etc. I'm all for giving first year students high priority."

OK, then you're the one who gets to face all the angry neighbours who show up at University community planning meetings. The people who complain about students taking over their neighbourhoods, about landlords cramming eight students into one house meant for four, about the parties, about the noise, about the drunkenness.

The universal refrain of these meetings, which I have also been to, is "why can't you take put them into Residence?".

The simple point is most universities can't. They have 4 times as many undergrads as they have beds. So they depend on student neighbourhoods. At present Residence is seen as advertising, period. I was a "Room Host" during my First Year, I showed off my room to tours. It got my express repairs when I needed them.

Universities stopped building residences with upper-years in mind in Ontario when the province stopped funding Residence construction.

Which makes explaining the present reality a bit hard to parents who went to university when different ideas were at play.

Finally, take an index of most Canadian universities and see where the construction periods are. The latest boom was nice, but it was smaller than earlier periods.

[W. Peden]

Another factor is the boarding school process. I don't know about North America, but there is a long tradition at British boarding schools of cumulative privacy: one begins in dorms, moves up into semi-private rooms, and finally into private rooms (if ever). Having a single room at a college is a natural peak.

[Andrew F]

There are some universities that are rolling out three-person rooms. This leads me to believe that universities feel they can get away with it, culturally, and would like to generate more revenue. The contraceptive value of a third person in a residence room is minimal at best.

For instance, while I was in university I was in a double room as part of a two bedroom suite (one single) with a small kitchen, a bathroom, and a small living room. Each of the people in the double paid about $550/month, and the single bedroom paid $600. The apartment was altogether perhaps 700 sqft. That residence was a cash machine. Worst of all, I couldn't claim my rent as a low-income individual because it was classified as 'subsidized housing'. Talk about adding insult to injury.

[Determinant]

@ W. Peden:

Boarding Schools in Canada are relatively rare, rarer than in the US or in Britain. Universities have traditionally recruited the products of provincial education systems, even before mass post-secondary education. Back then a good portion of Arts students were ultimately bound for ordained ministry via Divinity School.

[W. Peden]

Determinant,

Then the boarding school progress explanation may have its wings. It's not so long ago that the majority of British students were former boarding school (either public or private) pupils. A lot of colleges in Oxbridge still have that Hogwarts vibe, which is very weird if you come from an ordinary state day-school.

[Frances Woolley]

Determinant - "OK, then you're the one who gets to face all the angry neighbours who show up at University community planning meetings. The people who complain about students taking over their neighbourhoods, about landlords cramming eight students into one house meant for four, about the parties, about the noise, about the drunkenness."

Ah, IIRC, you live in London, Ontario, don't you? Or somewhere around there? This is a non-issue at many Canadian universities e.g. UBC, SFU, U of T, Carleton, where there are more commuter students and the university is smaller relative to the surrounding city.

Andrew F: "Worst of all, I couldn't claim my rent as a low-income individual because it was classified as 'subsidized housing'."

Is this in Canada? That's really interesting.

hosertohoosier "I find the social capital argument compelling, although I think you trivialize it by describing it at as somebody "getting at least one friend". You don't just get one friend, you become a part of their social network."

Yes, residence is great for forming social networks - that's why it's such a good idea to give first years priority when it comes to rooms. But a roommate who you don't get along with at all might be worse than no one.

W. Peden "So it was perhaps less imitation than similar biological pressures, in Scotland at least." -

Good point.

I'm still wondering about the economic arguments, also - how well do you think a British university that built mostly double rooms in halls would do in terms of attracting students? What about a Canadian university that built all single rooms?

[Determinant]

Nope, I don't live in London. I do know both Trent and McMaster have had this problem and Queen's has it's famous student ghetto.
Eh? What roommate friends? I had nothing to do with my roommate's social network. The dude and I despised each other. He was in Commerce, I was in Engineering and we had nothing in common. I threw him out at the end of the year after he overstayed his move-out date and didn't get his stuff out before I wanted to leave.

The habit of first-year priority means those students seek off-campus accommodation in their second year. Commuters who live at home usually don't do residence and few who lived in residence move back home.

It's usually residence then off-campus and that creates the problems. When subdivisions crept closer to Trent students started to congregate there and the tensions of course boiled over. No, I did not go to Trent. They don't do Engineering.

[Andrew F]

Frances, I attended Waterloo. All of the residence rates are quite steep. Given the rates the university charges, they could profitably accomodate anyone who is willing to pay them. I'm not sure why they don't build more residences. It might just be a matter of capital availability.

The neighbourhood north of Laurier and east of Waterloo is quite a student ghetto. There is a more upscale neighbourhood west of campus (too high rent for most students), a park to the south and a office park to the north. Students either live in residence or live quite far from campus. I lived about 30 mins walk from campus after first year.

Oh, and I did not get along much with my roommate much either. Definitely no social network exchanges. Thankfully he started sleeping elsewhere most of the time/was out all night and slept all day. Residence, however, was invaluable. Commuter students should still do it for first year at least.

[Frances Woolley]

Determinant: "It's usually residence then off-campus and that creates the problems."

You've identified a problem (which seems to be largely orthogonal to the main point of this post - the social control mechanisms embedded in the physical design of institutions - but anyways).

The question then is: what's the solution?

One solution would be the model that used to prevail at some British universities: provide sufficient on-campus housing for all students. That's not going to happen in Canada - universities generally don't have enough land, or enough capital. And if U of T or McGill or U Ottawa or UBC or U Calgary did have some spare land, they could find far more profitable uses for it than student housing (actually UBC and SFU have found much more profitable uses for their land than student housing. But that's another story).

Plus it's probable that students in small university towns would prefer slum landlord+low rent+freedom to living in a university residence anyways.

Another solution would be to house some upper year students on campus, and some first year students off-campus.

There are kids heading off to university this week who are just 17 years old - kids born in the last quarter of 1993. They're vulnerable and, not infrequently, totally clueless. They need the instant social network+social supports that residence offers. Being away from home and learning to do laundry is enough of a transition, without having to cook for yourself, or commute, or try to make friends when your only opportunity for meeting people is some lecture hall that holds hundreds of students.

Angry neighbours getting upset by partying students v. the emotional and physical well-being of kids who aren't even old enough to vote yet.

Sorry, that's not a difficult choice to make.

[Alex Plante]

It's usually cheaper for 3 to 4 students to share a big old apartment in a slummy part of town. Typically only foreign students and first-year students from out of town live in student residences.

When I was at Sherbrooke, if one of the roommates left after the first term, the other student could pay a little extra and rent the double room for the 2nd term. This happened quite frequently. In my second year I was lucky to find a "roommate" who spent most of his nights at his girlfriend's place, and only spent the night in our room when he had to study late for an exam.

[Determinant]

Well, those noisy neighbours really want the British model. This being an economics blog, I thought we should face some of the costs of residence construction choices. I was at those community meetings and my university had a neighbourhood association against student homes. Disregarding the fact that I had every right to live there as anybody else.

Speaking to totally clueless first years, I have seen a number of foreign students with English as a second language in that category. Often Residence isn't enough.

The Globe's recent article on foreign students is substantially correct.

Though back on room configuration, I know universities that are still building double room residences dating from the 1990's and 2000's. It's load factor combined with cheaper construction costs.

For birth control there is Captain Condom, a giant walking condom mascot who is seen frequently in Frosh Week.

[Michael D]

Frances, using the Carleton example, take the newer Prescott residence. There's still a high proportion of double-rooms to singles, but with an added advantage for the university: suite-styled residence rooms. This allowed to university to unload two separate costs onto students:

1. Cleaning costs - older residences like Glengarry had cleaners come in weekly (or more often) to decontaminate the biohazard-rich communal bathrooms; in Prescott suites, the four of you had to work out schedule for yourself.

2. Meal costs - the four-person suite also shared a kitchen, which is great! - except your residence meal plans are automatically cut as a result, meaning you pay more for the same food service given to the inhabitants of the older residences.

If I recall correctly, the other residences built within the last fifteen or so years at Carleton - Prescott, Leeds, Frontenac, and possibly that new one in mid-construction - all follow the same business model. I think the reasoning is more economic than social in nature, and has a lot to do with unloading maintenance costs on students which used to be borne by the university itself.

Plus, it's a lot easier to market suites! with kitchens! than it is to market traditional residences, with all the cultural baggage that accompanies them (i.e. a plethora of horrible roommate tales in popular culture).

For what it's worth, I was an out-of-towner in a Glengarry single residence in first-year. The single was great; but the rest of my residence experience was not, and I didn't see much - if any - of the social networking being done with people on the same floor, much less roommates. Most roommates on my floor in first year weren't on speaking terms by second-year.

[Frances Woolley]

Michael D - really interesting thought on downloading cleaning costs.

Meal plans are a whole other issue. One promising young econ student - a big, hungry, young guy - told me he deliberately bought the smallest possible meal plan in first year, figuring that many students don't use their entire plan, so he would be able to buy their surplus meals at less than cost towards the end of the year.

Suites with kitchens also command much higher summer rents - and that's big bucks.

I'm sorry to hear that the Glengarry experience was disappointing.

[Determinant]

To my mind guaranteed residence spaces to first years goes under the same column as guaranteed scholarships for a certain high school average, also known as tuition discounting. Both are advertising, they are attractions and expire at the end of first year.

If you ever doubt the "economic rationality" of universities, my mother got a call from University Advancement the week after Frosh Week my first year. The University was asking for money. Mom had just written a large cheque to the school and she saw this as crass.

I much prefer explanations based on sales and the profit motive. The use of residence is just another aspect of sales.

[Michael D]

Determinant - also true. I attended the Ontario University Fair in Toronto in Grade 12, and no small part of every brochure I picked up nor every pitch I heard dealt with how clean/new/scenic/amenity-laden that university's residences were.

The buildings are probably a great equalizer too. Attracting and keeping staff, earning a reputation in a field, competing for research output - these are difficult things for a university administration to develop. They require a long period of investment, and their payoff can be questionable at times. On the other hand, with a decade and some startup capital, your campus can have some pretty shiny new buildings and a lot of marketable - and very profitable - assets.

The scholarship aspect is another matter entirely. The discounting I know I made based on the amount of my first-year entrance scholarship was kind of embarrassing.

[Determinant]

It's amazing what can be done with a telephoto lens and a little Photoshop.

[Andrew F]

I instructed my parents in no uncertain terms to tell the university where to go if/when they asked for money. Waterloo will be asking me for money for the rest of my life, there's no reason for my parents to have to contribute as well.

[Determinant]

My mother was quite angry and rightly so. I promised to go put her on the Do Not Call List, this being before the national registry.

So I walked down to University Advancement, said what happened and made my request. They agreed. At the end I asked if calling people randomly and asking for money just after Frosh Week like that actually worked. The person said yes, you'd be amazed at how many people have $5,000 just laying around.