@skieurope : The highrises at Penn are surprisingly popular. Believe it or not, three of my kid’s friends actually chose to live together in one of the highrises for three years, and two of them stayed there a fourth year. Do I respect them for it? No.
@gibby and others: There is abundant, relatively cheap, and high quality off campus housing within a few blocks of the Penn campus, some of it closer to the center of the campus than many of the Penn dorms. There are a number of buildings that were developed in the past decade by private developers specifically as student housing, except with all mod cons. Penn students are not commuters, and living “off campus” does not impair their participation in on campus life.
I went to a college like Harvard, where almost everyone lived on campus for four years. (Everyone, that is, except my wife, who hated the on campus housing and moved off campus as a sophomore.) I loved that. I thought that was the best way for a college to be. My kids went to a college where, as at Penn, about 50% of undergraduates live off campus but within a mile or so of the main campus. They moved off campus as sophomores, and were happy as clams. They had much more, nicer, and more private, space, at lower cost, and they had a lot more control over their environment. Their lives remained completely centered on the campus. They couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to live in a student dorm for four years; they hear about Harvard’s house system and think “That sounds awful.”
I am not arguing that Penn’s housing system is better than Harvard’s. I think Harvard’s is pretty sweet. But the actual students who go to Penn do not likely envy Harvard students’ housing arrangements.