FIRST WORLD PROBLEMS GO BACK TO COLLEGE.

Tomorrow will be the fourth Monday of August, and that means the first day of classes at Northern Illinois University.  The relatively early start means two weeks of instruction before the Labor Day weekend, which I never decided for sure was worse than the later start leaving one week of instruction ahead of the weekend.  More students are returning to campus, where there is a relatively new residence hall (It was recently named for some long-ago student who checked the right identity politics boxes) set up as four single bedrooms en suite with a central kitchen.  Those rooms have lots of wall space for the students to display their aesthetic sense.

At least, that makes sense to Amanda Zuckerman, the CEO and founder of Dormify, a company focused on college dorm and apartment furnishings.

And beyond personal style, Zuckerman said that functionality and comfort shouldn’t be overlooked.

“Your parents want to send you away feeling comfortable, like you’re in a space that sort of supports everything that you're doing on a daily basis at college,” Zuckerman said. “Because if you’re not starting and ending your day in a space that’s functional and inspiring and warm and cozy, then how are you expected to be your best self on campus?”

That sort of thinking has the usual sort of fretters engaging in the usual fretting over How Unfair That All Is.

On average, American families spend about $1,200 on back-to-college costs, according to the National Retail Federation. While some spend much more, buying from retailers like Dormify, Dormco and others that specialize in dorm furniture and decor, paying for personal style consultants and even entering decorating contests, others are financially strapped with just the minimum college expenses, and are put in a difficult position when faced with “invisible” costs, such as making a dorm room livable.

“The kids who can’t afford a mini fridge are going to feel bad when it comes time to split the cost in the dorm room,” said Susan Dynarski, an education professor at Harvard University.

It's typical, isn't it, of the people in higher education causing a problem and then fretting about it.

Here is what once greeted matriculants to the University of Wisconsin and assigned a bunk in Ogg Hall.

That Ogg Hall had to go, something about it not being charming enough.  Somehow, though, the even older Lakeshore dorms remain.  "Years ago, the rooms there still had government issued gooseneck desk lamps and two or three rooms shared an electrical circuit."  Newer residential complexes were built along the lake shore as well.

[Adams and Tripp], which the state architect modeled on the Oxford enclosed-quadrangle college, probably don't have the electrical system contemporary students expect, but they have a lot more character than today's palaces offer.  Inside, the way the various houses (Botkin, Gregory, Frankenburger, and the rest) were laid out, nine rooms shared a restroom with two sinks, three toilets, and one shower.   We learned to share.

The electrical systems started getting into trouble once component stereo systems became the rage, generally in addition to the AM-FM clock radio that replaced the spring-wound alarm clock.  Then personal portable televisions became part of the moving-in-day burden, and university housing managers really began to fret about the demands on dorm electrical systems once computers and peripherals got into the mix.  (And still, the university issued printers were the ones that got overloaded when assignments were due.)

If there is an inequity here, the universities are complicit.

Students who live in the dorms make up only a small percentage of college goers, since many students commute to college, live off-campus or study online. At private, nonprofit colleges, about 60 percent of students live in the dorms, and at public colleges, about 36 percent live in the dorms, according to a 2016 report from the Urban Institute. The share of low-income students varies by how selective the institution is, but 70 percent of all students at public colleges receive Pell grants and 30 percent of students at private, nonprofit colleges receive Pell grants, according to an analysis by The Institute for College Access and Success.

Dynarski said that for the students who do live in dorms, the inequality is a manifestation of the outside world. She said that entering a four-year, residential college is often like entering into an upper-middle-class life.

“And if you’re not arriving with the accoutrements of upper-class life, then it’s difficult to engage with your peers socially, and then ultimately academically as well,” Dynarski said.

The common schools no longer inculcate the habits of the middle class, which means students arriving from neighborhoods where the families don't instill the behavioral accoutrements quickly figure out they don't fit in; and they're not assigned to austere Ogg Hall style dorms, which would be filled to excess with the stuff today's matriculants are able to set up in those individual rooms en suite.