SURVEY AT OXFORD

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30895, 30 October 1965, Page 18

SURVEY AT OXFORD

Housing Of Students (Special Crspdt. N.Z.P.A.) LONDON, October 29. The “bedsitter” is displacing the traditional set of two rooms for Oxford undergraduates, according to a student survey carried out over nine months. The survey was concerned with old and new university accommodation. Questionnaires were sent out last winter to about 6500 undergraduates, all living in college. The aim of the inquiry was to find out what the new standards of design were like inside the colleges as a guide on how to build and what to avoid. The survey found that 60 per cent, of the students liked their rooms from the start. After a term, 80 per cent, had grown to like them. Thirty-five per cent, made particular objections to bad sound-proofing or to too big a staircase, which made for noise and interfered with work. The most common fault was lack of cupboard space. What the students really disliked was having a “set,” as their rooms are called, which did not have lavatory and running water on the same floor. White-painted rooms were preferred to cream-painted ones.