I'll never forget the dorm room my sister moved into when she was a freshman at Bloomsburg University. To put it kindly, this room wasn't much. It was better than a prison cell, but nothing like what she was used to at home. I didn't have the heart to say it, but the thought in my head was something like, "You're going to live here?"

Back then, on-campus housing for underclassmen was weak at many colleges and universities: often cramped, cheaply built, poorly maintained, hard to keep clean, and totally lacking in privacy. Many students couldn't wait to move to apartments downtown.

Fortunately, things have changed. Students and families today aren't satisfied with housing that's just this side of adequate. The schools themselves understand that better dormitories are now a major selling point. It's a legitimate marketing advantage that helps them get selected by the outstanding candidates they court.

Systems-built construction can deliver amenities that the older structures - whether modular or stick-built - seldom had. More requests come our way for bigger and better rooms and we respond to that. Kitchens are included: that's handy for the students and appealing for their families because it helps keep a rein on meal costs. The bathrooms in almost all of the dormitories we build are integrated with the room suites. And anybody would prefer that to using gang toilets and showers for a whole floor.

We're versatile, with the capability of going up to 12 stories high and incorporating varied architectural treatments that blend well with existing campus environments. And non-combustible construction means that parents must no longer be concerned about their students living in substandard off-campus quarters.

The system-built method slashes waste and labor hours on-site. Projects using DeLuxe apartment-style dormitories are finished in far less time than comparable conventional jobs. When we build dormitories in the factory, we control labor, materials acquisition, and security in ways that are not possible in stick-built construction. With a construction cycle that's much, much shorter - weeks as opposed to years, often - the noise and disruption on campus are held to a minimum, and contractor teams are present for only a short time.

Having dormitories that students want to live in helps motivate the initial college decision - and also helps keep upperclassmen in the dorms. Colleges and universities want to capture revenue that they'd otherwise be losing when students rent apartments off campus. When they provide a true apartment-style dormitory setting, the institutions persuade many of their upperclassmen not to move away.

All in all, many colleges and universities are recognizing that it's not just what they wind up with, but also how they get there. As DeLuxe builds them, apartment-style dorms are excellent structures that fit perfectly into the campus environment. If you can save both time and money getting them there, it's a pretty easy choice for the school to make. If my sister could see the luxurious apartments students are living in now, I'm sure she'd be jealous.

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