Students at Michigan State University are going to have to get used to cramped quarters when they move in this fall as the school has a bumper crop of sophomores and freshmen and not many places to put them.
Almost 500 students will be living in dorm rooms of three people instead of the two occupants the rooms were designed to hold. The university calls this doubling-up “transitional housing,” and Karem Pegg is one of those in “housing transition.” He said it’s tight, but he likes his roommates and the situation could be worse.
Part of the overcrowding is down to how MSU has treated its housing rules over the years. Long ago, the university made it a requirement that sophomores, not just freshmen, live on campus. But since the 1980s the school has waived that rule. Then in the 2020-2021 school year, they put the rule back in force.
According to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, colleges across the country are facing larger freshman classes than they have in recent years, and not as many students are graduating. This creates a bottleneck that makes for crowded living on campuses.
At least the students at MSU won’t have to pay quite as much while they’re in “transitional housing.” The total cost for dorm housing per year is just over $5,000, but the students who are doubled up will get a $700 break on their bills. That’s just room, not board—a meal plan in the dorm cafeterias starts at $7,376 a year for freshmen.
The MSU dorms with the most students this year are Wilson, Akers, and Hubbard.
Schools without enough housing take different approaches to the problem. Some will put students in hotel rooms, but MSU campus life staff say this won’t work at their university. Though the school has an on-campus hotel, the rooms are booked more than a year in advance.
The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign tackles the problem by offering $2,000 in campus credit plus 100 meal vouchers if students cancel their housing plans. But that can only work, of course, if those students are able to find apartments or rooms on their own off-campus.
And in East Lansing, where MSU is located, open-market rents are too steep for many.
The student population at MSU is larger than some small cities. Enrollment last year topped 40,000 undergrads, the highest in the school’s history.
