Living the High Life in College?!

First Rolling Stone had this story on the high-life living couple (a Drexel student and Penn alum) who defrauded dozens of people of hundreds of thousands of dollars to live in Rittenhouse Square and cavort around the globe. Some dubbed them “a 21st century Bonnie-and-Clyde.” 

Now Philly mag has a story this month on “Tanning Beds! Flat-Screens! The New College Dorm,” featuring David Adelman, the president and CEO of Campus Apartments, the largest provider of student housing in Philly (with over 2 million square feet of real estate!). They also own properties in 50 other college markets around the country. 

“Schools have three problems: They don’t have enough housing, the housing they have is obsolete, and they just don’t know how to think about real estate properly,” says Adelman. 

This is absolutely true. We’re in the midst of the largest college-going generation in history–2009 will be the largest graduating class ever–and yet colleges seem to be steadfastly refusing to build the housing to accommodate them. They’ve added WAY more students than they’ve added housing. For instance, at Temple they’ve kicked upperclassmen off of campus and (if memory serves) can’t even guarantee housing for sophomores. This creates a demand that well exceeds supply, drives up prices to ridiculous levels, and drives cost-minded students (and their parents) to live in shells in some BAD neighborhoods. Imagine paying near $600 month to live in a house where the heat doesn’t work, rats fall through the drop ceiling, and you’re dodging drug-dealers on the way to your door. That’s what some of my Temple students dealt with. 

This isn’t only an issue in N. Philly. Last I checked, Penn State had the 2nd highest cost-of-real-estate rating in the state, because of the extent to which demand exceeds supply in State College. While rental rates continue to climb, students must also deal with rapidly escalating tuition rates–the only thing that seems to climb faster than the cost of gas.

This is a justice issue. The Universities passively allow their students to be victimized by slumlords and mortgage away their futures with massive amounts of debt, because I think they’ve determined that building more dorms isn’t profitable enough for them. Students aren’t so much a constituency to be served, as a commodity to be maximized as efficiently as possible. 

Meanwhile, Adelman is capitalizing on a paradoxical trend: 

 In the case of student housing, the market is really about parents, who are generally footing the bill. A decade ago, all parents wanted was someplace clean and free of rats. Today, a new generation of parents intent on pampering their kids is looking for luxe places filled with high-speed Internet access, intercom systems, Xbox rooms and gyms — and Adelman is providing them. The man who helped revolutionize University City is rewriting the blueprints for student housing at campuses across the country…

The word he hears now from kids and their parents is “luxury.” Today’s overprotective, coddling moms and dads are most particular about where Johnny and Susie live during their collegiate days, which has ultimately raised the bar for universities to rethink their decades-old dorms and housing units.

So where the trials of “college housing” used to be a rite of passage, these days, if Susie wants a tanning bed in her apartment complex, Susie will bronze with the best of them. Or so Adelman quickly learned from conducting focus groups about what students consider “necessities” nowadays. By giving them what they want (media rooms, computer labs, lounges, gyms, etc.), he makes his complexes that much more appealing than the next guy’s.

This new housing trend—catering to a spoiled Generation Y, and their spoiling parents, nationwide—is working. Last year, Campus Apartments invested more than $400 million in new acquisitions and development on college campuses across the country. Over the next two years, Adelman projects $700 million in transactions. (Yes, cha-ching is right.)

So, members of Gen Y (and their spoiling parents), do you object to this characterization? Do you agree these are “needs”?  Do you think Universities should care more about housing, or work to make it more affordable? What do you think about pursuing the luxurious life while in college? See any problem with it? Some do:

Jonathan Zimmerman, professor of the history of education at NYU Steinhardt, describes the recent construction of multi-million dollar luxury dormitories on college campuses as troubling.

“By providing really nice things for our kids, we’re teaching them to expect such goodies as their due. And we’re forgetting the older collegiate ideal, which prized the life of the mind over the lure of materialism.”

Philadelphia Inquirer (10/23/07) 

For more on the luxury housing trend, check out this post.