ABSTRACT
The majority of college students, however, are still spending 70 to 80 percent of their time in residence halls that have little relation to their needs and desires. Administrators have been so preoccupied with problems of growth, costs, and budgets that they have seldom bothered to question the basic assumptions of student housing design. Many of the more recent college housing programs rely on the concept of "natural" social groupings as the basis for dormitory design. In equipping the rooms for study, administrators and designers seem to have forgotten their own college days. Close communities of teachers and students can be created by building environments in which the two groups can live and work together. A study by Burton Clark and Martin Trow identified four student subcultures on the American college campus—academic, collegiate, nonconformist, and vocational. Each tends to operate on different although overlapping orbits and on different life schedules; each has their own values and perceptions.
