Student accommodation
Student accommodation is a building or buildings used to house students, particularly in higher education. These are known by different names around the world, such as halls of residence, residence halls, accommodation blocks or student hostels. Student accommodation may be managed by educational institutions, religious bodies or other charities, student associations, private companies, or agencies of local or national governments.
History
Student accommodation is thought to date back to the 5th century Nalanda mahavihara, sometimes referred to as "the world's first residential university". Student accommodation appeared in the Islamic world as part of the 10th century masjid-khan, the forerunner of the madrasa. In China, student accommodation was introduced during the Song dynasty, with students having combined sleeping and study rooms. Students were permitted to stay overnight at the Taixue from the 1050s, on the initiative of lecturers Hu Yuan and Sun Fu, possibly to avoid students being distracted by the entertainments available in Kaifeng. When a new campus for the institution was built by Li Jie in 1102, it contained 100 halls of residence housing 30 students each.The first college at a European university was the Collège des Dix-Huit, established at the University of Paris in the late 12th century. However, the early European colleges were only for postgraduate students. Undergraduates were housed from the 12th century onwards in university-approved accommodation known as halls in Oxford, hostels in Cambridge and pedagogies in Paris. These were run by a principal but were not endowed or incorporated. By the mid 15th century there were around 50 halls at Oxford, but following the admission of undergraduates to colleges and the rise of tutorial teaching at the expense of lectures, half of these had closed by the start of the 16th century and this declined further to seven or eight by the mid 16th century.
Colleges flourished most strongly in England and France, with comparatively few medieval colleges in Spain and Italy. In Germany and other lands of the Holy Roman Empire, colleges developed as accommodation for masters rather than students and the non-collegiate halls remained until after the Reformation. Even in Paris, Oxford and Cambridge, where the colleges were strongest, they only accommodated 10 to 20 per cent of students.
In Islamic lands, madrasas offered student accommodation within the main building. Examples include the 13th century Mustansiriyya Madrasa in Baghdad, where students were housed in individual cells, and the 14th century Al-Attarine Madrasa in Fez, Morocco, which had over 30 rooms housing around 60 students. The Madrasa Ben Youssef, built in the 16th century in Marrakesh, Morocco, had 134 student rooms arranged around 13 small courtyards to accommodate its student population. These had a reading area near the window, in the brightest part of the room, and a wooden alcove enclosing a sleeping area in the darker interior.
In the early modern period, residence in college became the norm in England and France, and was even made a legal requirement at French universities in the mid 16th century. Colleges were also important in Spain, although a majority of students there rented privately until the mid 17th century. Jesuit-run colleges drove a growth in residence in Spain in the 17th and 18th centuries. However, in Germany, Poland, Austria, the Netherlands and Bohemia, the halls fell away after the Reformation in both Catholic and Protestant regions. With the exception of the Jesuit colleges, there was a tendency for colleges to cater increasingly for wealthier students, which drove an increase in the number of colleges in Italy in the 16th and 17th century.
In the US colonial colleges, accommodation was often provided within the main college building in the 17th and 18th centuries. The first residential building was the Harvard Indian College in 1650. The early halls had a bedroom with a small study or closet off it for each student. These small rooms off a bedroom had become fashionable in Tudor England and had remained popular in the US. These could be rather small, with The Harvard Book of 1875 referring to the ones in Massachusetts Hall as " studies, or closets".
The French Revolution and the subsequent Napoleonic Wars saw the suppression of colleges in France and Spain, although some survived in Italy. In the US, Thomas Jefferson's "academical village" at the University of Virginia in the 1820s attempted to break away from the model of a large hall for student accommodation, with student rooms being directly off a classical arcade. However, the cost of building this made the university the most expensive in America, resulting in only the sons of the wealthiest families in the American South being able to attend.
In England, the expense of the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge similarly acted as a barrier to entry to those universities. This was initially replicated at Durham University, established in 1832, but a much more economical residential system was initiated there at Bishop Hatfield's Hall in 1846, with rooms let furnished and with shared servants, all meals provided in hall, and prices for both rooms and meals set in advance. It also pioneered the use of single-room study bedrooms rather than the "set" of rooms with a separate study and bedroom found in the older colleges. The study bedroom was a recent innovation at that time, with the term first recorded in 1842. These innovations inspired the foundation of private halls at Oxford and private hostels at Cambridge in the later 19th century and were taken up by Keble College, Oxford and Selwyn College, Cambridge, subsequently becaming the standard model for residential accommodation at universities around the world.
The second half of the 19th century saw the development of fraternity and sorority housing in the US. The first residential chapter house was established in 1864 by the Kappa Alpha Society at Williams College. At many US universities, fraternities provided the only organised student accommodation.
Student accommodation was established at the Victorian redbrick universities in England in the late 19th and early 20th centuries for a number of reasons, including philanthropy, provision for female undergraduates, attracting students from outside of the local region, and because it was seen as an essential part of university life. It was not until after the first world war that university-funded halls of residence brought residential life back to continental Europe. In the UK, the University Grants Committee also identified building halls of residence as a priority for growing the provincial universities, while the inter-war period in the US saw the revitalisation of residential life with the construction of the house system at Harvard and the residential colleges at Yale.
Types
Fraternity and sorority housing
Only found in North America, these are houses owned by student social societies known as fraternities and sororities. They are a major component of student accommodation in the US, but are also linked with reputational risk to universities and have been criticised for attracting alumni donations that might otherwise have gone to institutional projects.Halls
Known in different countries as halls, halls of residence, residences, residence halls, dormitories or hostels, this is the basic type that describes most student accommodation. Halls are distinguished from residential colleges by students being residents for the period they live in a hall rather than members throughout their time at university, whether in residence or not. Residential colleges may have multiple residential buildings, which may be referred to as accommodation blocks or halls of residence.Accommodation in halls is often in traditional single or multiple occupancy study-bedrooms, which may be catered or self-catered and have either a shared bathroom or an en suite bathroom. Studio apartments are uncommon in university-owned halls and are mainly found in private halls.
Residential colleges
Skyscraper dormitories
dormitories, termed dormitowers, have included the Fenwick Tower at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada, built in 1971, the Sky Plaza in Leeds, UK, built in 2009, and the Chapter Spitalfields in London, built in 2010, all of which held the title of the world's tallest purely student accommodation building when built. Some taller buildings include student accommodation among other uses, including the Het Strijkijzer in The Hague, Netherlands, the Roosevelt Tower at Roosevelt University in Chicago, and the Capri at Marymount Manhattan College in New York. The 33 Beekman Street tower at Pace University in New York, completed in 2015, was also claimed to be the world's tallest student residence, at. Altus House in Leeds, UK, built in 2021, was described as the tallest student accommodation building in northern Europe at. The 50-storey, 99 Washington Street tower in Manhattan, New York, originally built as a 492-room hotel, was re-opened in 2025 as the world's tallest student accommodation tower, housing 650 students. A 48-storey, tall building housing 1,068 students is planned for 30 Marsh Wall in London's Canary Wharf district, and is expected to be the tallest student accommodation building in the world when completed.The proposed Munger Hall dormitory at the University of California, Santa Barbara would have been the largest university dormitory in the world with 4,500 students over 12 floors. The building, nicknamed "Dormzilla", was cancelled in 2023 after controversy over the design, including that 94% of the rooms would be windowless and that there were only two exits.