Student’s death prompts
University halls of residence were meant to be places of reassurance for students and parents. That’s no longer the case, writes Joel MacManus.
In the opening scene of the 1999 film Scarfies ,abus arrives in Dunedin. Emma, a brand new first-year student, stumbles out, overloaded with baggage. There’s a crowd of students gathered nearby, jostling for position, peering over each other’s shoulders trying to get a glimpse of a public noticeboard.
It’s a nearly unrecognisable scene for the students of 2019. Not just because the physical noticeboard has been long since replaced by Facebook, but because the concept of a firstyear student going flatting has become increasingly rare.
University halls are booming. Otago University has opened two new ones in the last five years.
They’re popular among firstyear students, particularly those from out of town, because they get the chance to meet a lot of new people quickly. Parents like them too. They know that their children will be getting three proper meals a day, and there’s some kind of adult supervision around to protect them if anything goes wrong.
It’s a halfway house to independence that makes parents feel more comfortable than throwing their kids straight into the wild to fend for themselves.
There are more than 10,000 students in New Zealand living in fully catered university halls, and thousands more living in self-catered accommodation run by universities and polytechnics.
Halls have become an essential part of the university experience, and in doing so, have become big business.
Fees for catered halls range from around $15,000 to as high as $20,330 for the most expensive hall in the country, College House at the University of Canterbury. Most require payment in three lump sums.
Last week, a 19-year-old student, understood to be Mason Pendrous, was found dead by a staff member at Canterbury’s Sonoda Village, run by Australian company Campus Living Villages (CLV).
He was there unnoticed for nearly eight weeks.
How could this happen?
The high cost of university halls made this neglect especially shocking to many parents.
They had assumed that their kids were getting a level of service and protection which matched that fee. It now seems clear that they weren’t.
In theory, university halls are designed to make life as simple as possible for students, so they can focus on their studies. Typically, students live on a floor with 20 or so others, each in their own small room with a single bed and a desk. One residential assistant (RA), a senior student who gets free or discounted rent, usually lives on each floor.
There are also kitchen staff, cleaners who come through to vacuum rooms every week or two, administration staff, and a principal-type figure, who usually goes by a title such as warden or master.
Three meals a day are provided in the dining room, there’s a large common room, with TVs and pool tables, to hang out in between classes. In the evenings, there’s a study space provided, and older students are hired to run tutorials for the most popular classes.
It’s a very social environment. Students are constantly surrounded by others to hang out with, study together, play video games or social sports.
At the weekends, parties pop up, groups cramming into one room that can barely fit them all. Due to noise restrictions, RAs usually kick them out by 9pm, and they stumble off to a nearby bar.
College House was the first university hall in New Zealand, shortly followed by Selwyn College and Knox College in Otago. They were founded in the vein of an Oxbridge college, with in-house tutors and libraries, and staff who took just as much of an academic role as a pastoral one.
These halls, mostly run by churches, were the realm of former private school students whose parents could afford the extra expense. In the early 20th century, most students would rent a room in a family home or go flatting.
By the 1960s, as student numbers boomed, there was more demand on universities to provide affordable accommodation for the influx of new firstyears. That led to some of the first university-owned halls.
These were large-scale complexes, simpler and more practical than the traditional colleges. This was simply a matter of feeding and housing as many people as possible as simply as possible.
The demand has kept growing ever since, in many cases outpacing what universities were capable of supplying.
In 2005, Campus Living Villages paid $35 million to lease five Canterbury halls, totalling 2000 beds, for 35 years. For the university, it meant an easy passive income stream, without the administrative hassle of running the halls. But it appears that may have also led to costcutting that put services at risk.
Sonoda Village, where Pendrous died, had 54 students per RA. That appears to be the highest of any first-year hall in the country.
Three other CLV-run Canterbury halls also had extremely high ratios, ranging from 42:1 to 53:1. Other universities around the country average about 30:1.
A worrying trend?
It’s not the first time privately run halls have come under fire for sub-par services.
In 2006, Australian-listed Ingenia Communities Group bought two Victoria University halls, Cumberland House and McKenzie Apartments, and contracted CLV to run them under the name Unicomm.
Within two years, students were upset with the conditions of the halls, which included asbestos, extensive flooding, and burst sewage pipes, with no rent reduction to compensate.
Residents launched a protest during the university’s open day in 2008 and more than 400 signed a petition, which the students’ association took to the university council.
In 2014, the company listed the two halls, plus WelTec’s Education House, for sale at a suggested value of $55m. Both halls are now fully operated by the university itself.
CLV is now contracted to operate just two Victoria halls, Te Puni Village and Everton Hall, which caters to older students. It also manages the newly opened Otago Polytechnic hall, two halls at AUT, and halls at all three Massey University campuses.
The only other major player invested in privately run university halls is UniLodge, which operates Stafford House at Victoria and three locations affiliated to the University of Auckland.
Marketing material sent to prospective students does not specify a difference between UniLodge and university halls, and only university logos appear on information sheets.
There are no regulations governing how university halls must operate. Each institution runs them as it sees fit, which can lead to huge variations in processes around the country.
In the aftermath of Pendrous’ death, the University of Canterbury promised an independent investigation, and CLV said it would look into its own practices.
Around the country similar conversations are taking place. Education Minister Chris Hipkins instructed all universities to report back to him on their current pastoral care standards.
Massey’s accommodation team held an urgent meeting of staff from its three campuses yesterday.
Stuff understands that staff raised concerns about the quality of RA training and support, and the number of students in the care of each RA. Massey halls have about 30 students per RA, in line with the national average.
In an email circulated to staff, vice-chancellor Jan Thomas promised Massey would look into new tools that would help RAs be more systematic in their interactions with residents, and some method of reporting when a student repeatedly misses meals in catered accommodation.
Reviews are under way at Waikato and Victoria as well, though they have not specified what the focus of those reviews will be.
When asked, Otago and Auckland both said they were currently satisfied with their quality of care and didn’t feel a review was necessary.
New Zealand Union of Students’ Associations president Caitlin Barlow-Groome called for national standards to be put in place across all universities, and Hipkins has signalled that is likely to happen.
‘‘It’s clear there is a regulatory gap and it is something we’re looking at as a matter of urgency,’’ Hipkins said.
He declined to be interviewed or to provide any further information about what those regulations might look like, as advice was still being sought.