One under-discussed aspect of this is that so a few of these children have shared a bedroom due to lack of many siblings and oversized houses that they demand their own space in college.
This cultural change has doubled the square footage required in dormitories.
For what it’s worth, the cultural expectation to share a room in college is not universal. In the UK, Australia and many parts of Europe are often horrified to find that American students share a bedroom.
Coming from Europe, I would never EVER share a room with someone not bound by blood / romance. And for a house only in exceptional cases (vacation with friends etc).
But living in the USA I sometimes hear that people have strangers living in their house, renting out a room, or sometimes, even roommates.
And then I wonder, is it more acceptable here because they got over it when going to college?
Sidenote: I wonder if the concept of roommates pushed up the prices of 1 bd apartments, as now you can have 2 people in there, who combined pay more than a single person.
> I wonder if the concept of roommates pushed up the prices of 1 bd apartments
I reckon no, since you'd have to pay more than half of the original rent for the price to go up, but you at most get to have just half the room. A higher cost per square footage, which doesn't seem like a good deal, if you could have already afforded the full rent intially.
Although historically my University (in the UK) did still have some student halls with double rooms, they were already uncommon to the point of vanishing by the time I attended almost thirty years ago.
I don't see how this doubles square footage though. You can obviously provide significantly smaller study bedrooms for individuals, I'd have expected this to mean maybe the space for 1000 students (sharing, blergh) now has capacity for only 800 (single), something like that.
My US college had the opposite trend 10 years ago. Rising enrollment but no increase in housing led to single rooms becoming doubles, doubles becoming triples, and the shared lounges to become quads.
So glad I lived off-campus (5-10 minute drive) every year after freshman year. Twice the space, better amenities, no fire alarms, nobody trashing the bathrooms, and all for half the cost.
Because I persuaded my parents to spring for one of the nicer options, you actually could have fitted another bed into my room - it would be a squeeze but possible. But for many UK students that would be impossible.
Since I liked this city and never left I actually walked past my old halls earlier this evening, I was tempted to ask a kid to let me take a photo to prove the point but it's now well into holiday break season, anybody left in those halls likely has nowhere else to go so that's pretty bleak.
Instead, here's a brochure, check the top (cheapest and most plentiful) bedroom photos.
It's not clear to me (the article is paywalled and I'm not giving Rupert Murdoch a fucking cent) how widespread these luxury dorms are -- I wouldn't trust WSJ to report accurately on this sort of thing -- but this kind of experience doesn't sound very common based on the experiences of recent college kids I've talked to. Some of whom went to very expensive universities.
This cultural change has doubled the square footage required in dormitories.