By michele richinick
Despite concerns about universities suspending admissions in coming years due to space availability, Northeastern is not facing this problem because of recent action to counter overcrowding.
“We have some tripling and crowding, but overcrowding is being reduced each year,” said Philomena Mantella, senior vice president for enrollment and student life.
The number of students attending college has grown during the last decade, Mantella said. With this trend, many colleges have been increasing the number of enrolled students, but Northeastern has not, she said.
Each year, Northeastern admissions targets 2,802 freshmen and 550 transfer students for enrollment, but these numbers are not always exact, Mantella said. The number of enrolled freshmen has remained in the same target area, but the number of transfer students has decreased because retention has increased, she said.
“We have an ‘optimum enrollment philosophy.’ We want to keep [enrollment] to a size for high quality experience,” Mantella said. “We are not growing while we have the opportunity to grow. We could grow in size, but we have the capacity we look to as being optimum, and we stay with that capacity.”
While some incoming freshmen request to be in triple rooms for the reduced costs, there are about 350 students who are in triples who didn’t request to be there, Cave said. These situations create some crowding in the residence halls, but by late fall and early spring semester each year, housing is usually able to offer these students the option to change their room assignment. However, some students choose to stay where they are, she said.
Recently Northeastern has decreased the number of forced triples, Mantella said. If the university had the ability to build faster, the crowding problem would be solved more promptly, she said.
“We’re not in a situation where students are saying, ‘I can’t find housing. I can’t go to Northeastern,'” Mantella said.
The university is trying to alleviate rooms that are overcrowded, like doubles in West Village G, said Chris Bourne, Student Government Association vice president for student services. Northeastern has removed overcrowded doubles in West Village H, he said.
The university has created a residence campus target number to accommodate 60 percent of full-time undergraduate students, a portion of the student population to represent adequate housing, Mantella said. The university expects to have enough beds for 60 percent of the undergraduate population after the next building phase. This will include Parcel 18 and Cullinane Hall, which will both be completed within the next few years, she said. Cullinane Hall will become West Village K.
“We do hope that with the opening of Parcel 18 in the Fall of 2009 we will be able to further reduce some of the tripling in the freshmen halls,” Cave said. “For example, if we eliminated just 100 ‘tripled rooms’ with Parcel 18 inventory, that will actually ‘de-triple’ 300 students, which would be close to eliminating all forced triples.”
After this building plan is completed, forced triples will go away if the university continues to hit the projected 2,802 undergraduate students, Mantella said. In the plan, there will be some limiting tripling to accommodate the students who wish to live in the most affordable housing alternative.
“We expect that the majority of tripling would only be for students who request it,” Mantella said.
According to local media reports, Harvard University has decided on a two-year suspension of transfer students because of limited housing availability.
“Transfer students are offered housing on a first-come first-served basis,” said Stephanie Cave, associate director of housing services for Northeastern. “Although we do not guarantee that we will be able to house all transfer students, we do commit to housing a minimum of 400 transfer students annually. To date, this number has been sufficient in meeting the demand for housing from this population.”
