College Short Five-Star Student Centers Boast Lavish Amenities

Author: Daniel Phillips and Joshua Carson



The latest battle to lure prospective students to university campuses across the country is being fought not over claiming cutting edge educational or research facilities, but in a gaudy competition of pampering students with overly lavish amenities. Whether it is student unions, recreational centers or sports complexes, these facilities previously furbished for pure functionality are now becoming multimillion-dollar luxury day spas with the allure of five-star resorts and have consequently spurred a nation-wide debate over just how far "educational necessity" can be stretched.

The University of Vermont has recently decided to spend $70 million on a new student center of colossal scale, including a pub, ballroom, theater, artificial pond for wintertime skating, complete with a view of the mountains and Lake Champlain. According to Daniel M. Fogel, president of UVM, "These are not frills, they are absolute necessities."

Cornell University is similarly engaged in a $259 million investment in what it calls "student life" and residential facilities.

The University of Houston boasts a $53 million "wellness center," which opened this year with a five-story climbing wall behind its immense rotunda while boulders and palm trees accent the leisure pools outside.

Meanwhile, students at Indiana University of Pennsylvania can play one of 52 golf courses from across the globe on their room-sized golf simulator that uses real balls and clubs. And not far away, Pennsylvania State University's equally excessive student center contains two ballrooms, three art galleries, a surround-sound movie theater and a 200-gallon tropical ecosystem with newts and salamanders, adjacent to a separate 500-gallon salt-water aquarium with a live coral reef.

Ohio State University is recorded as spending $140 million on a 657,000-square-foot complex catered with kayaks and canoes, indoor batting cages and rope courses, massages and a climbing wall large enough to take on 50 simultaneously scaling students.

Although such transformation of campuses is outlandishly driving up the cost of education, such construction has made a strange appeal to alumni who evidently "give to institutions they are proud to be associated with," said Linda A. Acciardo, a spokeswoman for the University of Rhode Island which, by the way, just opened a $54 million sports complex housing luxury boxes and a skating rink that is open 15 hours a day.



Source: The New York Times