When Sherri Miller studied on Northeastern’s Boston campus in the 1970s, there were around 15,000 undergraduate students and around 5,000 graduate students, according to documents preserved in Northeastern Library’s Archives and Special Collections.
Miller said she chose Northeastern because of its affordability and student resources. Similar to current students, the co-op program made the university stand out to her.
“I thought the co-op program would be the best option for me, and it was the most reasonable in terms of cost,” said Miller, who graduated with a bachelor’s degree in speech and language pathology in 1976. She spent her undergraduate and graduate years as a commuter student.
Today, Northeastern’s Boston campus is bustling with students. According to the City of Boston’s 2023 Student Housing Trends report, or the Report, Northeastern has led total enrollment growth since 2013 across all Boston colleges and universities, increasing by more than 16,707 students, or 63.2%. In 2023, Northeastern enrolled 43,144 undergraduate and graduate students on its Boston campus, according to data collected in the Report.
The National Center for Education Statistics reports that overcrowding occurs “when the number of students enrolled in the school is larger than the number of students the school is designed to accommodate.”
According to the Report, total enrollment across all Boston colleges and universities has collectively increased by nearly 18,200 students, or 12.6%, since 2013. Northeastern’s increase in student enrollment represents 92% of that increase, according to the Report.
The Report collects enrollment and student housing data annually from 27 colleges and universities based in Boston proper and the greater Boston area. Since 2013, it has used enrollment information, the number of full-time undergraduates and graduates living in university housing, off-campus housing locations and planned beds to measure student housing trends. Harvard University’s undergraduate enrollment is not included in the Report.
According to the Report, Northeastern’s undergraduate enrollment has increased 24% since 2013. Additionally, graduate student enrollment at Northeastern has increased 145.7% in the same timeframe.
In comparison, Boston University, or BU, increased undergraduate student enrollment 0.68% and its graduate enrollment by 28% since 2013. Northeastern added nearly 36 times the number of undergraduate students and four times the number of graduate students to its Boston campus as BU did in the same time period.
A cramped campus
Maya Torgersen, a fourth-year psychology major, said they feel the impact this growth has had on the 73-acre campus.
“I’m constantly getting trampled. I feel like I’m at the club,” Torgersen said.
Additionally, Torgersen said they’ve had significant difficulty registering for the classes required for their major.
“Getting into upperclassmen classes has been impossible. I’m a fourth-year, and I still haven’t taken three of my senior requirements despite a lot of effort,” they said.
Gaby Murry, a fourth-year design major, said she has difficulty using campus buildings due to overcrowding. She said the issue has “gotten worse, especially [in] Snell.” She said it impacts her on campus, especially when she “[doesn’t] have time to buy food and wait in line for 15 or 20 minutes at Wollaston’s or in Curry [Student Center].”
Since starting at Northeastern, students say they have seen a noticeable change. Parker Sutton, a fifth-year environmental studies major, said he noticed the increase in enrollment on campus throughout his time at Northeastern.
“There was definitely a time where I could skate around during passing period, and it wasn’t an issue,” Sutton, a skateboarder, said. “But now, if I’m going places on campus, I walk so I don’t kill someone.”
Northeastern media relations said in an email to The Huntington News that “Northeastern’s campuses in London and Oakland are becoming prime destinations for our undergraduates, which will continue to reduce pressure on our Boston campus.”
According to the email, there are around 750 undergraduate students starting in Oakland in the fall, and close to 1,100 in London.
Limited bed space
Many students say they have been placed in dorm rooms initially designed for one or two people that now house two or three people. Hotel properties surrounding the university’s main campus are now also leased or purchased by Northeastern.
Since 2018, students have been housed in the Midtown Hotel, about 0.6 miles from Centennial Common. Additionally, Northeastern houses students in 60 Belvidere St., formerly the south tower of the Sheraton Hotel, which is 0.8 miles away from Centennial Common. In January 2024, Boston’s Planning and Development Agency’s board of directors approved Northeastern’s proposal to convert 426 rooms in the hotel into permanent student housing.
In addition to increased admittances, the closure of White Hall — due to the discovery of significant water damage — has contributed to Northeastern’s ongoing housing shortage. Students assigned to live in White Hall, which had around 400 beds, were reassigned housing days before the fall 2023 semester began. Among those displaced were roommates Nicole Wooddell and Giulia Levy, who were incoming first-years at the time.
Since 2007, Northeastern has added three residence halls with an additional 3,655 undergraduate beds on the university’s Boston campus, according to Northeastern media relations. There are currently 12,000 beds available “on and around” the Boston campus.
Wooddell and Levy were placed in a dorm housing three students that is designed for two on the 12th floor of East Village, or EV, alongside Global Scholars and John Martinson Honors Program students. Levy, a second-year communication studies and media and screen studies combined major, said living in EV felt “isolating.”
“Speare, for example, had a bigger sense of community,” Levy said. “I feel like the Honors [students] were kind of on their own, and I was friends with a lot of Global Scholars, but then they left.”
Wooddell, a second-year business administration and communication studies combined major, said the lack of affordable housing on campus impacts her as a student receiving financial aid. Because of the lottery number she was assigned for fall 2024, her options were limited when selecting housing for her second year.
“Not everyone can afford to live in something like LightView,” Wooddell said of an apartment complex Northeastern leases at 744 Columbus Ave. “‘[My current apartment] is one of my only options as a student here on financial aid. I have to live in on-campus housing all four years. With the amount of people here, it’s definitely going to impact my ability to get housing.”
Additionally, Woodell is concerned with how Northeastern advertises on-campus housing in hotels.
“Continuing to house people in things like the Sheraton [Hotel] and covering it up with the Belvedere title … it’s just a little too misleading,” Woodell said. “I don’t think we should continue to have students housed in on-campus housing that’s not even close to campus.”
Aashna Sahani, a second-year mechanical engineering major, lived at 60 Belvidere St. as a first-year student. She explained that because of the location, she was “a lot less part of campus.” This year, she lives in an apartment-style dorm on 337 Huntington Ave., which she said makes her feel more integrated.
Third-year health science major Alyssa DeHart spent the second semester of her first year in a double in International Village, or IV, after spending her first semester in the N.U.in program. Typically, dorm rooms in IV are suite-style, consisting of two doubles connected by a shared bathroom. Each occupant has a lofted bed, two dressers and a desk tightly packed into the space, leaving limited living space for the students.
“We couldn’t study there because there just wasn’t space,” DeHart said.
Hazem Algendy, a second-year computer science major, decided not to live on campus this year after being assigned to IV because he knew the dorms were cramped.
“I was assigned to IV, and I opted out of housing because I did not want to be in that building,” Algendy said.
Emily Aitken, a third-year double major in physics and combined major in math and philosophy, said she prefers “the summers [on campus] because it is so much more relaxed in terms of fighting for a spot in a classroom or on Centennial.” She lived at 60 Belvidere St. her first year and enjoyed the longer walk to campus in the mornings.
“It was a beautiful way to wake up in the day,” Aitken said.
Increased pressure on the housing market
Northeastern’s increased student enrollment have made it more challenging to find off-campus housing once students have surpassed their two years of guaranteed on-campus housing. As measured in the report, Northeastern had the biggest increase of both undergraduate and graduate students living off-campus of all Boston-based colleges and universities.
In Boston, the average cost of rent for a two-bedroom apartment as of January 2025 is $4,364/month, according to data collected by CoStar Group published on Apartments.com. In comparison, the national average rental cost of a two-bedroom apartment is $1,808/month, according to data collected by CoStar Group published on Apartments.com.
Due to high demand, Julia Evers, a second-year political science and international affairs combined major, started searching for off-campus housing almost a year before her fall 2025 move-in date.
“We really wanted anything under $4,500/month because that would have meant under $1,500/month per person. That was nearly impossible to find,” Evers said.
Additional strain on the market comes from graduate students looking for housing. From 2021 to 2023, the number of Northeastern graduate students looking for off-campus housing in Boston increased by nearly 88%, resulting in 7,875 graduate students looking for housing in the Boston area, according to the Report.
More than 10,000 Northeastern students participate in co-op each year, many of which leave campus to move closer to their co-op employer for several months at a time, Northeastern media relations wrote in their email to The News.
This student expansion has contributed to the pressure on the housing market and lowered the available housing pool for Boston’s non-students and families. According to the Report, every housing unit rented by students shrinks the housing pool available for the workforce and families of Boston. Student competition increased housing costs because “multiple students living together as roommates can often afford to pay more for a unit than a family,” according to the Report.
“Students raise rental prices by $200 a month compared to neighborhoods with less dense student populations,” the Report reads.
The future of the campus
In June 2024, Northeastern released its Institutional Master Plan, or IMP, for the next decade. According to the IMP, White Hall will be replaced with a 332,500-square-foot, 230-foot-tall residence hall that would add 1,000 beds.
Additionally, Northeastern received approval from the Boston Planning and Development Agency in March 2024 to build a 23-story residence hall at 840 Columbus Ave., which is currently a parking lot. The IMP proposes around 2,360 new beds to be added over the next 10 years with the new construction replacing White Hall and 840 Columbus Ave., as well as the lease of 60 Belvidere St.
Sahani said overcrowding impacts her ability to take advantage of campus facilities like study spaces, recreation facilities and the library.
“Obviously, Northeastern has great facilities and resources, but whether you can actually use those, considering how many people are trying to use the same resources, is different,” Sahani said. “It limits how much I’m able to actually make use of the resources that I’m paying for.”
