The Housing Crisis on U.S. College Campuses

An opinion piece from Matthew Yglesias in Governing calls attention to the crisis facing U.S. colleges and universities that mirrors the nation’s larger housing crisis: too much demand, not enough supply.

According to David Deming, co-author of a new report on college admissions, “every year there are 30,000 to 35,000 students with scores of either 1550 (on the SAT) or 34 (on the ACT), but there are only 20,000 slots in these 12 [top] schools.”

For Yglesias, “There is a relatively simple way to reduce the tensions and build on one of America’s great national strengths: Make these schools larger.” And the biggest obstacle to doing so: NIMBYism.

As the article explains, elite universities often have trouble building new student housing near their campuses. “Thus the quintessential local issue of zoning squabbles ends up generating a national scarcity of elite college admissions slots, fueling zero-sum competition and ultimately reducing America’s ability to increase global ‘exports’ of its best-in-class high-end higher education product.”

Yglesias believes “state governments ought to take a larger role in land-use policy and overrule local stakeholders.” Universities and the engines of economic development they represent, Yglesias writes, are “too important to allow the people who happen to live close-by to have veto power over the whole thing.”