With high prices and landlords pressuring University of Wisconsin-Madison students to sign off-campus housing leases as soon as possible, many freshmen decide to hedge their bets and enter the lottery system to return to live with University Housing.
But, with UW-Madison setting records for freshmen enrollment — 8,516 freshmen for the 2024-25 school year, its second-largest freshman class — many students, including incoming freshmen, are unable to return to the residence halls.
The university is looking to change that.
One of UW-Madison’s priorities in the next few years is to build a new residence hall to house the growing student population, Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin told The Daily Cardinal in September. The initiative, which the university included in its 2025-27 biennial budget request to the UW System, would need approval from the Republican-controlled state Legislature before any construction can begin.
“We want to house those that want to live with us,” University Housing Director Jeff Novak told the Cardinal. “You can't expand enrollment without at least being able to find first-year students a space to live.”
Novak told the Cardinal University Housing typically has between 2,000 and 2,400 students who want to return to the residence halls in a given year, though they only have space for about 1,000 returning.
“We [reach] out to a good number of them, and then many actually say no,” Novak said.
But for students that do wish to return to the residence halls, many are confused why the university can’t house them.
“Why am I being almost forced out of the dorms?” a now third-year student who wasn’t able to return told the Cardinal. “Because you didn't plan this out accordingly, and you no longer have the space for us?”
The student, who wished to remain anonymous because they work for the university, said the time between receiving a University Housing email informing residence halls were capped and signing their lease “was probably the worst period in their life.”
“I’m freshly 19 years old on a college campus, I don’t know anything about the housing market in Madison, I can’t do this,” they recalled of their forced entry into the Madison housing market.
A history of housing shortages
UW-Madison’s 20 residence halls are designed to house just over 7,700 students. In recent years, the university turned double rooms into triple rooms, converted lounges into housing and used campus buildings such as the Lowell Center to house larger numbers of students.
A shortage of student housing has been a consistent issue at UW-Madison and served as the driving force behind the opening of Dejope Residence Hall in 2012 and Leopold Residence Hall in 2013.
Before construction finished for Dejope, UW-Madison was the only school in the Big Ten conference that could not house all freshmen who wanted to live on campus. The opening of the Lakeshore residence addressed that by providing housing for 408 students, now 589 students.
First-year students living in residence halls are more likely to perform better academically, and the odds even better for those who stay for a second year or more, according to University Housing.
Mnookin told the Cardinal UW-Madison generally wasn’t a place “where most people want to [live] on campus for years and years” but said the university wanted a “little bit more breathing room.”
Funding for the new residence hall, which UW System’s Program Revenue Supported Borrowing estimated would cost $300 million, would not come from Wisconsin taxpayers, Mnookin said.
The third-year student wishes UW-Madison could do more to educate incoming students on the student housing crisis.
“It would be nice if there were resources given at SOAR as well, like, ‘Here’s what you should start doing so that you’re not blindsided by October,’” they said. SOAR did not respond to a request for comment.
Being prepared to navigate the ferocity of the student housing crisis is something they wished they had known before coming to UW-Madison.
“It literally feels like [the] Hunger Games,” the student said of the housing process. “You got to be quick, or you’re going to be lost.”
