College Students Sprawling Out on Bigger Beds
Super-sizing isn’t just for combo meals anymore.
They’ve grown up with SUVs, Hummers, giant plasma TVs and, evidently, bigger beds—Gen Y’s all grown up and in college, and they like their non-digital amenities big.
This fall, colleges and universities across the country are attempting to answer the demands (and generally taller and larger bodies) of the millennial generation by upgrading their bed sizes on campus. Those Gen Y kids used to the comforts of double or queen-sized beds at home haven’t been too thrilled with the skinny singles that have been the dorm standard for decades.
Double beds, writes Valerie Strauss in the Washington Post, are part of schools’ array of tactics aimed at competing with off-campus housing to keep student on campus. Some colleges are even implementing luxuries like maid service, in-room microwaves, and larger, renovated dorm rooms that can better accommodate the wider beds (“Students Can Rest Easy Now,” Sep. 18, 2007).
Size Does Matter
“The trend seems to be that there is more competition among different schools for the student body—I guess literally—with larger beds,” says Ryan Trainer, executive vice president of the nonprofit International Sleep Products Association.
Strauss writes about Elissa Robinson, now a senior at American University, who, “[a]ccustomed to sleeping on a queen-size, 60-by-80-inch water bed at home, … got a rude awakening when she headed off to college: a twin-size bed, somewhere around 38-by-75 inches, with a mattress that had seen better days.”
After three years of dealing with the twin bed, Robinson received a double bed from AU for her senior year. “[T]his is much, much better,” Robinson says. “It’s where I sleep, do my homework and everything else. It’s just more of an adult thing to have a bigger bed.”
Bigger is Better
College campuses have traditionally plagued their dorm denizens with the modest twin mattress that many students these days haven’t seen since elementary school, if at all.
“Many of them are not coming from single beds,” says Rick Treter, director of residence life at AU. “Many come from doubles and queens, so they have to readjust to living on the single bed.”
AU made its move to double beds, Strauss reports, after receiving complaints from students that the twin beds were “too small and too childish.”
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro has also started providing double beds for its on-campus students in response to feedback from focus groups and student requests for larger beds.
UNCG students characterized twin beds as “too small and uncomfortable,” says Mary L. Hummel, the director of housing and residence life. The new doubles “accommodate students more comfortably, especially taller students, and better meet student needs.”
Though college administrators may not know for a few semesters if their efforts to entice students back to on-campus housing will prove successful, initial feedback on the bigger beds has been nothing but positive.
“It’s amazing,” says AU sophomore Matt Valdivia. “Now I can be alive and fit on the bed in every direction.”