Swing from halls to flats at Lincoln

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32848, 23 February 1972, Page 19

Swing from halls to flats at Lincoln

Rapid inflation, causing sharp increases in all costs and charges, had made residential accommodation beyond the financial capacity of many students, the principal of Lincoln College (Dr M. M. Burns) said yesterday.

Dr Burns was asked by Rev. W. M. Hendrie, at a meeting of the college council, to give reasons for the remarks in his report which said applications for residential accommodation at the college this year were fewer than the places available.

Dr Burns said students found that when living in a flat they could live more cheaply by doing a lot of the work themselves that they would pay extra to have done for them in halls.

There was also a change in attitude among the students. Young people today liked to feel they were independent, and acted as such, so the halls tended to be regarded as less desirable than small “cells” such as apartment-type flats. “To run a residential hall

you have to have a fair measure of control over the student,” Dr Bums said. He said the situation at Lincoln was unusual because the college had a wide variety of standards of accommodation to offer. Because food and heating charges were very much the same, the price differential in charges was only about a dollar. Dr Burns said he could expect -two things to happen—a swing from residential halls to apartment type buildings and flats, and in two years a further swing back to residential halls.

The Lincoln College Students’ Association representative on the council (Mr W. K. Burge) said he endorsed the remarks made by Dr Bums. Discussions with other students throughout New Zealand revealed that accommodation charges at Lincoln were high compared with those at other universities such as Canterbury and Victoria.

The swing to flats had resulted in more first-year students living on the campus in proportion to senior students. This unhealthy imbalance had an adverse effect on student life at the college, he said.

Mr Burge said the association was interested to find out whether there was any change in a student’s academic results after a move from a residential hall to a flat.