Dormitory - Higher Education

Higher Education

Most colleges and universities provide single or multiple occupancy rooms for their students, usually at a cost. These buildings consist of many such rooms, like an apartment building, and the number of rooms varies quite widely from just a few to hundreds. The largest dormitory building is Bancroft Hall at the United States Naval Academy.

Many colleges and universities no longer use the word "dormitory" and staff are now using the term residence hall (analogous to the United Kingdom "hall of residence") or simply "hall" instead. Outside academia however, the word "dorm" or "dormitory" is commonly used without negative connotations. Indeed, the words are used regularly in the marketplace as well as routinely in advertising. College and university residential rooms vary in size, shape, facilities and number of occupants. Typically, a United States residence hall room holds two students with no toilet. This is usually referred to as a "double". Often, residence halls have communal bathroom facilities.

In the United States, residence halls are sometimes segregated by sex, with men living in one group of rooms, and women in another. Some dormitory complexes are single-sex with varying limits on visits by persons of each sex. For example, the University of Notre Dame in Indiana has a long history of Parietals, or mixed visiting hours. Most colleges and universities offer coeducational dorms, where either men or women reside on separate floors but in the same building or where both sexes share a floor but with individual rooms being single-sex. In the early 2000s, dorms that allowed people of opposite sexes to share a room became available in some public universities. Some colleges and university coeducational dormitories also feature coeducational bathrooms.

Most residence halls are much closer to campus than comparable private housing such as apartment buildings. This convenience is a major factor in the choice of where to live since living physically closer to classrooms is often preferred, particularly for first-year students who may not be permitted to park vehicles on campus. Universities may therefore provide priority to first-year students when allocating this accommodation.

Halls located away from university facilities sometimes have extra amenities such as a recreation room or bar. As with campus located residence halls, these off-campus halls commonly also have Internet facilities, either through a network connection in each student room, a central computer cluster room, or Wi-Fi. Catered halls may charge for food by the meal or through a termly subscription. They may also contain basic kitchen facilities for student use outside catering hours. Most halls contain a laundry room.

In UK universities these buildings are usually called "halls of residence" (commonly referred to as "halls"), except at Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, St Andrews, York, Lancaster and Kent where the residential accommodation is incorporated in each college's complex of buildings, and simply known as "rooms". (Members of the college who live in its own buildings are usually said to be "living in", or "living in college"), although "halls of residence" is still used at times.

The majority of bedrooms in UK halls are now single occupancy - offering the first chance at privacy for some young people who shared bedrooms with siblings at home. Kitchen facilities are usually shared, as are bathrooms in some halls, though more expensive en suite rooms are available in some universities.

In Germany there are dormitories called "Studentenwohnheim" (plural: Studentenwohnheime). Most Studentenwohnheime are run by the Studentenwerk ("student union", an organisation providing social, financial and cultural support services to students in Germany). Some are run by a Catholic or Protestant church. Church-run facilities are sometimes single-sex. Studentenwohnheime may be on Campus or outside of Campus. They are usually low cost and serve poorer students.

At Spain the dormitories are called "Colegios Mayores" or "Residencias de Estudiantes". There are some being part of the local universities like RESA who builds on land of the universities and provide accommodation to their students and private ones like Melon District at Barcelona as the major residence hall in the city, Galileo Galilei at Valencia (part of the Victoria Hall Group) and the Residencia Universitaria Benito Perez Galdos at Madrid; the three of them offering high standard services to the most demanding students.