The fantasy of dorm living ends after roughly a week, usually around the first encounter with the communal bathroom and the mold. At four-year institutions, the average cost of living in a dorm is nearly $13,000 per year. For a shared room that may or may not have air conditioning—and probably has mold—that price is steep.

My own experience has been tolerable—the communal bathrooms and the morning I woke up to a flooded room notwithstanding—but I know students at my university, Emory, who have had it bad.

While writing for the Emory Wheel, my school’s independent, student-run newspaper, I reported on persistent problems in the Jolley Residential Center (JRC), widely regarded as one of the campus’s worst residence halls. Students I interviewed described bathrooms in constant disrepair, citing broken toilets, oppressive humidity, and, in the most serious cases, mold so severe that some had to relocate. At the time of my reporting, rumors circulated that the university was planning to renovate JRC. But the latest reporting indicates plans to construct an entirely new building—a project that seems to be delayed.

Unfortunately, this kind of situation is common on American campuses.

Howard University drew attention in 2021 when students slept outdoors in encampments to protest unlivable conditions—mold, insect infestations, leaky ceilings, and flooding—that they said put their health at risk.

One freshman told ABC News that she suspected mold in her dorm had contributed to a respiratory infection. She said she simply wanted housing that did not threaten her health, but instead found herself, as she described it, “waking up every morning with a cough that I didn’t go to sleep with the night before, and struggling to breathe at night.”

Online discussion forms suggest the housing problems go beyond maintenance.

In a Reddit thread from last year, one user wrote that her niece had nowhere to stay after transferring to Howard. “When we applied we were told that freshmen and sophomores would be on campus but as it stands now she doesn’t even have an assignment,” she said. Another commenter replied that the situation was widespread: “Unfortunately I know so many in this situation this year. They over-admitted freshmen and all of the housing has been in disarray it’s horrible.”

Howard’s freshmen and sophomores are required to live in university housing—housing that costs more than $12,000 per year.

The university has taken steps to address the issue, including plans to renovate residence halls and expand housing capacity. Yet the lack of space remains a persistent problem, and in recent years, some students have even been placed in temporary accommodations such as hotels while the university works to expand campus housing.

And Howard is hardly an isolated case.

In the same year as the protests at Howard, the University of California, Santa Barbara faced criticism for its proposed Munger Hall—a mega-dorm designed with mostly windowless rooms intended to “force students out of their sleeping cubbies and into communal spaces.” The project was ultimately canceled after architects and students likened it to a “psychological experiment.” The New Yorker weighed in on the situation and documented the already windowless Munger dorm at the University of Michigan, where students reported errant fire alarms, a trash chute that bombarded residents with falling waste, and the profound discovery that removing windows does not, in fact, make people make friends.

More recently, bats infested the University of Georgia’s Oglethorpe House—a dorm that costs students roughly $3,000 per semester—prompting a health investigation into possible rabies exposure. Students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill also reported mold outbreaks in 2019 severe enough to force temporary relocations while the buildings were cleaned. And reports from as recent as January of this year suggest that significant issues persist.

It’s clear that inadequate dorm conditions are not confined to a handful of campuses. They are widespread across higher education.

Why do these problems keep happening?

One reason is simply that many residence halls are outdated. Built decades ago, their plumbing, ventilation, and structural systems have steadily deteriorated, making them especially prone to serious maintenance problems. Universities also frequently defer maintenance because housing competes with other “budget priorities” such as athletics. (Read, “College Sports Have Outgrown the Schools That Made Them.”) Overenrollment has also led to overcrowding, prompting the conversion of study lounges and other common spaces into dorm rooms. I spent my first year of college in a converted study room due to overenrollment. It wasn’t terrible, but it definitely was not designed for three students.

Of course, dorms are revenue generators. Universities charge thousands of dollars each year for shared rooms, while conditions sometimes, if not often, resemble low-quality rentals. Since many students—especially freshmen—are required to live on campus, they have little choice but to pay premium prices for substandard housing.

But I think if colleges and universities are going to charge exorbitant amounts of money for dorm living, the quality of these units should match the price.