Comments on: Students No Longer Too Cool for Dorms

By: Purchasing dilaudid

Purchasing dilaudid — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 05:40:08 +0000

Purchasing dilaudid…

Purchasing dilaudid…

By: mo glue

mo glue — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 23:33:57 +0000

Well, university housing is pretty darn expensive. I stayed in the dorms two years and enjoyed it, but it a massive rip-off. I pay $500/month and I’m as close to campus as the dorms are.
I have more space, have a kitchen, have my own room, have better and healthier food, have more food options, and I pay MUCH less than the dorms. My landlord is actually really good too. Plumbing was clogged at around 10pm on a saturday and they had someone over within an hour. They have always been prompt. Living in private housing, if you’re smart enough to shop around, is definitely PARETO IMPROVING. i think rational choice more than social stigma is the reason why so many umich undergrads live off campus.

By: mw

mw — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 22:34:12 +0000

“So it’s encouraging that students may be starting to realize that living right near their classes in a large community of students with a nonsleazy nonprofit landlord might not be such a bad deal after all.”

But the big, bureaucratic non-profit U seems to beat the sleazy landlords by a pretty wide margin in the “Who’s the biggest rip-off artist” competition.

Yes, the U is building “North Quad”, but even now while that dorm is still unbuilt and another big dorm is closed for rehab (last year Mosher-Jordan, this year Stockwell) — even then I understand the U is having trouble filling its dorm rooms at the prices it charges.

And wait until the new private dorms come on line and falling local real-estate prices have their effects on private apartment rental rates. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it reaches the point where all the dorm rooms are singles–not because students request them, but because there just aren’t enough students wanting on-campus housing at the U’s high prices.

By: Scott Wolchok

Scott Wolchok — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 05:52:36 +0000

+1 for “the dorms are too expensive”. I paid ~$500/mo incl. bills and food to live in a 2-bedroom off-campus…the dorms are $8000-$9000/year for a tiny double.

Also, underage drinking is much more convenient if there isn’t a cop assigned to patrol the hallway right outside your bedroom.

By: Young Urban Amateur

Young Urban Amateur — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 13:34:20 +0000

I think that the tendency at private schools (or at least, at elite private schools) for students to live in dorms for 4 years is due to several factors–partly tradition, partly snobbery, partly the higher incomes that tend to come with elite private schools, partly the lower class sizes at private schools. Also, elite private schools discourage part-time enrollment (if it’s even possible at most of them). The situation is different at public schools, where student family incomes are lower and class sizes are too big for universities to house anymore–hence there is no stigma attached to living off-campus. Furthermore, public schools are much more likely to welcome part-time students.

I support efforts by universities (and mega-universities like the U of M, just as a random example of course) to house more of their students. However, I will be the first to agree that it is kind of a ripoff.

By: Dale

Dale — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 05:37:45 +0000

“In urban areas, where there is often more off-campus competition for student housing, some colleges are still seeing a spike in upperclass interest in campus housing.”

This is the article’s only real address of any off-campus housing situation and it is a flat, facile statement where there is no analysis provided.

By: hector

hector — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 18:44:19 +0000

?????? This article addresses on-campus, as well as off-campus housing. It concerns itself with student housing options.

By: Dale

Dale — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 04:41:11 +0000

What a crappy article. It’s about as responsible to write about housing markets and look only at on-campus housing as it is to write about job markets and look only at on-campus jobs.

By: Bruce Fields

Bruce Fields — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 19:28:02 +0000

Wow, yeah, Matt isn’t describing a dorm I’d like to live in.

By: Zach

Zach — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 17:48:49 +0000

Ann Arbor landlords may be sleazy, and I’ve had one of the sleaziest (Zaki “I alter your check and forge your initials to avoid paying income taxes” Alawi), but nothing they could throw at me approaches the degree of institutional incompetence and bureaucratic rot that infests University Housing. Meals that cost like $10 a piece and not having the option to go without a meal contract, janitors that don’t clean because the hall directors will cover for them when they get complaints, not having vacuums in West Quad for eight months even when residents are complaining about dust and filth that is a potential dust hazard, etc.