Get Herald RSSAcross campus, students are feeling the effects of a housing crunch that has left first-years detatched from their units, stowed in lounges, and dropped into kitchens. Because the University rightly does not place freshmen in triples or quads, there is a trickle-down effect that also wipes out housing for upperclassmen. As a result, The Herald reported yesterday, nearly all common spaces and hallway lounges are now bedrooms.
While the beginning of each year is often a little unpredictable with respect to matriculation, a major factor in the housing crunch is the higher enrollment among the class of 2012, which is about 3 percent larger than expected.
The larger-than-expected enrollment seems to be the result of a bad gamble by the Office of Admission. The Herald reported yesterday that the University admitted about 120 more students than last year as a response to other schools' changes in admission and financial aid policies. Last year's financial aid arms race leaves Brown's offers looking less attractive than those from schools like Harvard and Princeton, who reached deeper into their waitlists because they just stopped offering early admission. As a result of these changes, admission officials believed more students who were admitted to Brown would choose to go elsewhere.
Only that didn't happen. Instead, Brown's yield rate stayed nearly the same, and now we find ourselves with a freshman class our housing system cannot support.
We cannot really fault the Office of Admission for their choice to admit more students. Despite the fact that the decision does not offer a huge vote of confidence in Brown's ability to compete with its peers, the choice is admittedly still a rational one.
The lesson to be learned here is that as colleges continue to tweak their financial aid packages and admission policies to attract students, University officials should expect the admission environment to be unpredictable for quite a while.
As a result, there needs to be some leeway in the Office of Admission's enrollment targets. We cannot continue to have a situation where every time it misses the target by a few percentage points, all the lounges and kitchens on campus disappear. The latest numbers show Brown has advantages beyond financial aid - including a strong residential experience - that attract students even when other colleges offer more money. But if the University undermines those advantages, students really will start to choose our peer institutions over us.
We realize being more conservative with enrollment targets may mean admitting fewer students, which would hurt revenue. But the advantages are that students would have access to important amenities like kitchens and lounges, and first-years wouldn't be separated from a primary social support network.
At least then, those of us who do decide to come wouldn't feel so short-changed by the numbers games inherent in college admissions.
