What the heck, UCI? I am finishing my master's at Berkeley, and they can't even afford to keep the libraries open enough hours (seriously: for the first half of the fall semester, all libraries were closed ON SATURDAYS. Until some students stayed in the Anthro library all night on Friday night, holding it open until Saturday. Suddenly a donor came through with money to keep the libraries open on Saturdays. SATURDAYS. Last I checked, UCB is a research institution... which means there are lots of grad students who are probably (ahem!), I don't know, needing to use the library on the weekends?)

PRIORITIES!

I wonder what the economic downturn will do to the arms race?

Probably nothing, since universities don't really have to respond to consumer demand. So much of tuition is paid for by the government, charity, or government subsidized loans that higher education is vastly over-consumed in the US as is. Combined with the cultural over-valuation of college degrees and you don't exactly have a recipe for market accountability among administrators.

Something to keep in mind is, which students will have access to these hotel-like dorms? Common practice in administration is to tier dorms into groups, with older dorms being the cheapest, and the newer, amenity-filled dorms being the most expensive. Although Financial Aid is calculated on some kind of 'average room and board cost', the reality is, only people whose families can afford to pay the full freight cost of college comfortably (and those whose kids are on a 'full ride' aid package, ie athletes), can afford to live in these lovely dorms. But for the majority of students on campus, who get some aid, but not enough aid, or whose aid is partially in the form of loans (which is no aid at all), get stuck in cheaper, older dorms. There is obvious stratifying in campus housing, along SES lines.

This has repercussions across campus. Campus friendships form first on convenience, and part of that is that most freshmen make friends with the people they live with, and are mentored into campus life by the upperclassmen who live in their building, which furthers the divide on campus by SES. The wealthy and the privileged are, literally, behind a locked door, inaccessible to the rest of their classmates, and that locks access both to them, and to the activities they participate in, the parties they attend, the networking for jobs they have, etc. While they may not notice the divide as much, those living in less spa-like atmospheres do, and resent it.

I doubt the economic downturn will do much about these buildings. They are being built to attract people who don't need aid, and athletes.

Yup. My university is doing this too. It's all about luring Freshmen, taking their tuition money, and then forgetting about them. They keep building more and better freshman dorms, which are becoming increasingly luxurious, while forcing the upperclassmen to live 3 people to a ~500 square foot room with crummy amenities. And then they wonder why all of us move off-campus.

Crikey! I would much rather go to a school with average dorms, and pay less tuition...

I go to Boston University. I have never been to the rock wall, or even really used the gorgeous Fitness & Recreation center (or FitRec, as we call it) at all. I don't need to, I can get just as good exercise walking next to the Charles. But they won't give us hand soap in my dorm-- we have to buy that for ourselves-- and last week during the rainstorms so many roofs caved in or leaked that they sent the RAs around to ask if we had water damage in all the buildings. By trying to lure in new prospies, they're actually making the quality of life worse for some of their current students. (It's a regular joke among students to wonder to what purpose our very expensive (top three, last I checked) tuition goes, exactly.)

are you shitting me...? universities are suffering budget cuts left-right-and center, museums are closing down and science departments shrunk, but the dorms have climbing walls and swimming pools?

*sigh*

I live in Rockoff here at Rutgers and we certainly do not have those perks nor do I think it ever lasted past the first year of the building being open. On another note, the building itself if smack in the middle of New Brunswick's busiest area and is where the bad part of the city begins. I find it intriguing that I live in the nicest housing yet if I cross the street to the C-Town I encounter all sorts of poverty. There are constant security alerts sent out via email to students and most incidents seem to take place outside in front, including a shooting a few years ago and another back in the Fall. I've been offered drugs while running into 711 as well.

http://news.rutgers.edu/medrel/news-releases/2008/08/pictures-of-rutgers-20080820/Lounge-cafe-tables.jpg

This picture shows shops yet when in reality it's an empty abandoned lot next to a C-town and a planned parenthood kind of place.

When UNC first opened in Chapel Hill, the students had slaves in the dorms with them. (I'm not sure if the slave service was provided, or the students brought them.)

Those images are unbelievable to me. I go to a rather small school... our entire graduate student population is approximately 600, undergrads about 5000 i think. Anyway, we do not have anything remotely like that. I often find that my university resembles a cross between a prison and a highschool (they aren't nearly as different as you might imagine).

We have a new gym with an olympic size swimming pool, but it is no different than what you might find at a YMCA.

Our biggest issue is work space. Graduate students in the natural sciences get their own desks in a program office with space to do their work as a teaching assistant and student. In the social sciences and humanities, we get to share a room with a single desk for as many as 15 students. We want our own desks on campus... not a resort-style swimming pool or a giant fireplace.

Are you effing kidding me? And I thought Warwick University (UK) was heaven when I had the good fortune to spend a year there as an exchange student… And silly me always thought that university was that period of your life – the one where you move out, grow independent, get to know the not-so-bright side of existence, and take it all as an incentive to never be so seriously underfunded and overwhelmed again.

I am … just stunned. Not in a dismissive, condescending way – just plain stunned. Seriously, who needs all that? Do you even have the time to enjoy it? And, seriously, how can universities afford all that – they surely must be making cuts somewhere, don't they? Please don't tell me this all comes out of tuition fees or rich parents' check book…

PS: Oh, the libraries! It used to be same at my German university (9am-7pm, closed on weekends), though I was lucky we didn't have the 200+ students 'seminars' (i.e. 'smaller' classes designed for discussion) like in some places. Need I say that our government is afraid we aren't attracting enough foreign students? Well, at least, my degree is a lot cheaper than what those guys at UC must be shelling out – and I am plenty thankful for that.

The picture from UCI is misleading - that's from a 3rd party housing company. To get to that picture you hop from the official housing website to the American Campus Communities group that UCI commissioned to build and handle that particular pseudo official campus housing. It's that group which hired the very good photographers that are good at staging. All our other "amenities" for housing or are rec center don't show such photographer investment (that and many were built during times of plenty). As with the above comments, we are having a great deal of budget troubles too like many of the other public California schools.

wow, that's insane. i just did a search to see if my campus was trying to do that as well, because honestly, we have old fashioned dorms, there is no way they could try and pump it up and pretend like it's some fancy place. i think i would vomit if they did. they do a lot of things like that, but they don't pretend to be some resort.

http://www.newpaltz.edu/esl/roomphotos.jpg

In a sense, I think creature comforts may be an effective way to draw competitive applicants. Most people don't know specifically what they want to do when they come to a university, and don't have any good objective measures for which university would best help them succeed/prosper. Sure, there's rankings and tuition costs - but what happens when you decide between two schools of similar level? You look at which place you'd rather live at.

I'm pretty amazed anytime I see the fitness centers at any Division I public school. They're clearly made to attract freshmen - wave pools, waterfalls, entryways that look more like something off the Vegas strip than a college campus.

Ironically, the Div I private school where I'm currently a grad student has none of this. It has a well-stocked gym, to be sure, but it's clearly there to be used rather than to look good on tours. No waterfalls, just a basic Olympic-sized pool and that's it. But this school is way higher in the rankings than those ones, and high school seniors try to get in here because of the academics, not the size of the TV screens in front of the treadmills (there aren't any).

I don't know if the focus on the fancy gym is the same at public schools that aren't so into athletics.

I went to UCI and I have a comment to make about the so-called amenities shown above....
Those are not dorm rooms. They are off-campus apartments run by an independent company in conjunction with the university, and the only requirement to live there is that you have to be a full time student--whether you are a grad student or an undergrad.
As upscale as these accommodations may seem, the inside of each apartment is pretty standard dorm-style fare (in other words, they aren't as nice on the inside as they are on the outside). Furthermore, they offer affordable living in an area that is otherwise completely unaffordable to the average college student, and the grounds are just on par with other living spaces in the area.
UCI has extremely limited on-campus housing, which forced students to either remain at home (like I did) or commute for several miles.
So, I'm supposed to get all upset because an independent developer built a modern-style apartment complex near the school?

I think a better example would have been UCI's state of the art gym, which makes every single 24-hour fitness ultra sport I've ever been to look like a Gold's Gym.

I went to Rutgers, and all I ever heard was complaints about Rockoff. Safety, noise, litter, drugs, the neighborhood, parking, poor building government, isolation from the rest of campuses, etc. It got a lot of hype when it opened, but that's Rutgers for you. And good luck with that bus stop. Nightmare.

I question how much we should take these images seriously. Obviously, universities want people to attend their school so they try to sell themselves in any way they can. They’ll only show you the things they want you to see, so realistically what they present to the public may not be a complete representation of what you’ll actually be getting. Even so, these images do serve their purpose in attracting students. While the level of education is probably one of the biggest factors when choosing a school, the image of the school is still an important aspect. I know for me personally, the schools that I was choosing from were all at about the same academic level, so it was the little things like appearance, amenities, and the environment of the school that swayed me. People want to see that they’re getting benefits like a new, fully equipped gym or great resident halls to live in when they’re paying thousands of dollars to learn at a university. Even though I completely agree that this money could be spent in other more beneficial ways, keeping up appearances seems to be so important in our current society that universities will probably continue to expend money on amenities as long as it continues to succeed in drawing in wide-eyed freshman looking for that extra something that confirms their decision in attending that school.

Are these universities or hotels?? Are all unis in the US like this? I went to Adelaide Uni in Australia. We had a fish pond and a lawn.

I'll second what has been said about UCI. I'm a graduate student there (there is a very large graduate community on campus. What is pictured is a posh private community, and it is very expensive. People there pay around 1800/month for a 2 bed 1 bath. It's pretty sad actually when you consider our teaching assistant wages are only around 1650/month so the only way you can really live there is if you have outside money coming in.

The architecture firm for whom I work designed several ACC projects. These are privately funded projects - and they seem to target universities that don't have the cash to build their own upgraded student housing. All of the money for construction comes from private funding - and these projects are incredibly profitable. There is a waiting list a mile long for the two we worked on. The businesses located within the properties also do very well with their captive audiences.

I think the luxury part sets a pretty high standard for life - if you get used to living large as a student, how do you cope with the reality of going out into the world and making do on a starting salary that doesn't support such amenities. Oh, i know - bring out the credit cards!

The part that isn't discussed is that there are requirements to have credit cards on file and the property is constantly under observation - and one little mishap and your parents get charged for repairs. Not that accountability is bad - it isn't. However in order to live in this luxury, one gives up a lot of ones right to privacy.

Everything changed a lot after the start of the lockdown. We chose college for my son based on the fact that he would continue swimming professionally. However, we have been forced to study from home for almost 8 months. It's good that we have a pool. I tried to make it as safe as possible, look at this info. I don't use chemicals so my son doesn't have lung problems due to exercise. Modern robotic pool vacuum cleaners are an excellent solution to this problem.