Overcrowding is currently a major issue on many college campuses across the country. A number of schools suffer from a severe lack of housing, which forces students to live in cramped dorm rooms or move off campus. Some universities and colleges are also finding that they do not have the classroom facilities to keep up with annual increases in student enrollment.
Fortunately, Tufts does not have overcrowding problems as serious as those of many other universities across the country: "Overcrowding is not an issue at Tufts," Dean of Undergraduate Admissions Lee Coffinsaid.
Coffin believes overcrowding will not become a major issue in the near future, either. "There were approximately 1,275 students in the last three freshmen classes, and that is our target for the Class of '09 as well," he said.
Professor Charles Inouye, a member of the Task Force on the Undergraduate Experience and professor of Japanese, International Letters and Visual Studies, believes that overcrowding typically becomes a problem for schools when class size is increased in order to increase a school's profits.
"It's a quick fix that usually can be absorbed with relative ease over the short term," Inouye said. "Sooner or later, though, we run into problems like not enough housing or an unfavorable faculty to student ratio."
Tufts Undergraduate Admissions carefully manages enrollment. They examine trends in freshmen and transfer enrollment and take into account students studying abroad and students on medical leave.
"Ideally, this approach avoids the kind of unexpected swings in enrollment that lead to overcrowding," Coffin said. "Forecasting human behavior is not an exact science, but it is surprisingly predictable."
The perception of overcrowding at Tufts varies according to students' experiences. While freshmen Floor Deruyter and Evan Barnathan do not believe that overcrowding is a problem at Tufts, sophomores Sara Gale and Leanne Andruszkiewicz are very worried about their chances for obtaining on-campus housing for next year.
"I think it's a problem that juniors don't get housing," Andruszkiewicz said. "We would like to live on campus, but we know it's completely unrealistic."
Gale feels the same way. "I think that's the reason a lot of juniors go abroad," she said.
Currently, Deruyter and Barnathan do not know any freshmen who are living in a forced triple. However, Gale lived in one last year in Hill Hall.
"It was a big room to begin with, so it wasn't that bad," she said. "But the problem was deciding which one of us wanted to leave because the triple was being broken up." Eventually, one of the girls moved to another dorm room because the triple was no longer necessary.
While overcrowding may be an issue for rising sophomores, many Tufts students see it as a bigger issue at some of the other universities that their friends attend. Andruszkiewicz has friends who have experienced various forms of overcrowding at University of Massachusetts-Amherst and MIT.
"My friend goes to UMass and has a thousand people in her physics class," she said. "Her advisor didn't even know her name. He had to look her up on the computer."
Baranathan has friends living in very cramped quarters at school. "Some of my friends are in quads that should be doubles - the beds are all bunked up," he said.
Some members of the administration at Columbia College in Chicago are worried about the recent growth in class size. According to an article in the Columbia Chronicle, enrollment is up 6 percent this year, making the total population reach 10,350 students.
Columbia officials are not sure if the university has the space and resources needed for such a growth in student body. College provost Steven Kapelke told the Chronicle that the growth in enrollment was needed to in order to increase the school's income. However, he also believes that Columbia will need to expand its facilities if the growth continues.
In fall 2003, overcrowding in dormitories was a major problem at University of Kansas. According to an article in the Daily Nebraskan, many students would start the year living in dormitory lounges rather than rooms. Two to four students would live in each lounge space, with extra furnishings such as lamps and a cordless phone aimed at making the living situation somewhat easier.
Nonetheless, these lounges are temporary. The University of Nebraska does not expect students to live in them for the full year. Vacancies will occur throughout the semester, and the housing officials plan to keep in close contract with the students living in the lounges.
Hopefully, after the construction of Sophia Gordon Hall, overcrowding will no longer be even a small problem at Tufts.
"Sophia Gordon Hall and the new music building are good examples of near-term steps the University will take to accommodate the undergraduate population at Tufts," Coffin said. "The campus master planning process that is now underway is also an important activity that will help us manage these issues."
Tufts is also attempting to keep up with student growth's effect on classroom space. "One way we have tried to keep up with classroom demand is to clean up the old block schedule," Inouye said. "We now have fewer overlaps, and people are spread out over the day and week a bit better than before."
According to Inouye, Tufts does not currently need the construction of "an expensive classroom building."
"At Tufts, we try to stretch every dollar," he said.
