Dorm Rooms Are Bigger in Canada, Too

The supersizing of dorm rooms is not strictly an American trend. The Globe and Mail reports that Canadian students are living large on campus.

“My room is bigger than my house,” Christian Marchand, a first-year student in public relations and business at Thompson Rivers University, in British Columbia, told the Toronto-based newspaper. He “chatted up his new doorman, watched cable television, slept in an oversized double bed in his suite and worked up a sweat on an exercise bicycle at the gym in the same building” within the first day of arriving, the paper reports.

“A surging youth population raised in relative comfort compared with their parents, and increasing competition among higher education institutions to attract them, have prompted some colleges and universities to restructure their residential-life offerings to meet the demands of a new breed of student,” says the article.

Nipissing University, in Ontario, has set up an ecovillage for its students, to encourage “ecologically conscious living,” the article says. Al Carfagnini, executive director of student affairs at the university, said students are “used to all the comforts, and they won’t share rooms. … At the same time, they’re wanting to get involved in things like Ecovillage. They say, ‘I like my space, leave me alone, but let me work within it to save the planet.’”

It wasn’t clear from the article whether students housed in that project will have to share dorm rooms. During The Chronicle’s recent visit to the EcoVillage at Ithaca, which works closely with local colleges, residents said part of the learning experience was adjusting to living within the community and making decisions with others. How do modern residence halls encourage, or discourage, those values?