Rutgers University is divided into five residential campuses, and once freshman Imani Hayes figured the system out, she noticed one of them—called Livingston—being referred to as “the black campus.”
In part, Hayes found when she began at Rutgers in 2011, that was because Livingston was where the African American studies classes were held. But she said she learned there was another reason: It was one of the cheapest places to live.
“If you look at the pictures of the dorms, they were kind of old, not very appealing,” she said. “Nobody really chose to live in Livingston. The only people who really lived there were the black students,” many of whom were from lower-income backgrounds and price conscious.
As calls intensify for more diversity at universities and colleges, some students and researchers say socioeconomic and racial segregation on campuses is instead on the rise. Among other things, they say, differently priced dorms and dining halls are dividing rich and poor—and, by extension, white and nonwhite—by what they can afford to pay.
The trend has been propelled by some public universities’ attempts to compensate for budget cuts by luring higher-income and out-of-state students with newer (and more expensive) housing. There has been a separate, little-noticed phenomenon of pricey off-campus student apartments being built by private real-estate investment companies. This is a change from a time when the only price difference among rooms in different dorms was based on whether they were singles, doubles, or triples.
Rutgers, for example, added new apartments with single rooms, private bathrooms, refrigerators, microwaves, dishwashers, and the highest rents on campus. Those have attracted higher-income students, many of them white, Hayes said. A Rutgers spokesman refuted this characterization, saying that the university “is renowned for its diverse population and inclusive community” and that more than half its students are nonwhite. Federal data show this is in large part due to a disproportionate representation of Asians, who make up 26 percent of the enrollment, which is 7 percent black and 13 percent Hispanic.
[For more of this story, written by Jon Marcus, go to http://www.theatlantic.com/edu...by-dormitory/501602/]
Comments (0)