Duke University is in the midst of a housing crunch. Due to a confluence of factors — including its Class of 2025 being 100+ students over the anticipated class size, the desire of students to live on campus after years of the pandemic, and rising rents in Durham — more students want to live on Duke’s campus than the school has beds. And in spite of the university adding 150 beds to its housing roster, there remains a possibility all students who expected to live on campus would be able to.

As Katie Tan reports for The Duke Chronicle in a piece entitled “Duke might not have enough on-campus housing this year. What’s driving the shortage?,” “To meet the demand, 140 non first-year students will be housed in West House and Epworth dorms on East Campus… In May, 186 rising juniors were waitlisted for housing due to pending study abroad applications and more demand for on-campus housing…HRL is also offering all resident assistants on East Campus the opportunity to live with a roommate this coming year due to the housing shortage. Brandin Howard, associate dean for residence life, wrote in a Tuesday email obtained by The Chronicle to East Campus RAs that the opportunity is ‘strictly voluntary.'”

It’s not like Duke is the only school in the midst of a housing crunch. As an example, the University of Utah recently incentivized alumni — offering each $5,000 per semester — if they’re able to house a student since their campus-housing waitlist is now over 3,500 long. And, if you think about it, it’s not all that surprising. With elite universities besting previously expected yields and with so many students, after a long and lonely pandemic, wanting to be at the center of campus life, it’s logical to follow that student interest in living on campus would rise. It will indeed be interesting to see how other universities address this trend in the months to come.