> The real solution is to build more affordable student housing on or near campus, but that would require funds from the state government, which is unlikely to provide them. Within the UC, all the housing must be self-funded; it needs to make enough money from residential payments over its lifetime to cover construction/maintenance/services.
With UCSC in the bay area, construction is incredibly expensive. This means that the campus literally cannot build affordable housing for students. They are currently building a 3000 space complex (currently held up by NIMBYism, but that's another topic) and the "cheapest" they can build for graduate students is around $1200 per month for a bedroom in a 4 bedroom apartment. Given that the graduate students are being paid ~$2000 a month this isn't a great situation.
UCSC is really in a bad spot. Either the state needs to stop mandating blanket enrollment increases across all campuses or it needs to step in and force Santa Cruz to build.
Students living with professors isn't necessarily a terrible idea.
Not only funds, but it would require a shift in the attitude of the locals towards such buildings.
You're making the argument that there is something inherent in professors that makes it more likely they will engage in sexual relations with people, which is problematic and strange.
Perhaps a better solution would be to reduce the student population and university size to what the local housing market and community could support, given opposition to construction of student housing. Obviously they’d need to eat humble pie for that to happen, which is why it’s not being discussed.
We know for a fact that it happens, and there have been recent sex scandals at the UC Santa Cruz, the university mentioned in the article. This is not a weird or unsubstantiated concern. And I never said there was something inherent to professors that causes it.
I'm actually tired of this discussion. My entire point is it's a red herring that distracts from the issues around housing.
Probably not that many (although it happens in grad school all the time), but let's invert the question: How many 50-year-old professors want to have sex with beautiful young people?
> I'm actually tired of this discussion. My entire point is it's a red herring that distracts from the issues around housing.
But it's not a red herring. It's a very real concern, and we know it's real because sexual misbehavior already happens between students and professors, including at UCSC! Do you honestly believe that it would not increase in prevalence if students and professors started living together?
However, students living with professors is a terrible idea. There is already too much sexual misbehavior with weird power dynamics in academia, especially between professors and grad students, and this all happens without them living together. It would only get worse.
The real solution is to build more affordable student housing on or near campus, but that would require funds from the state government, which is unlikely to provide them.