The importance of a bipartite relationship between students and on-campus housing at Cornell University
It would be optimal if Cornell University’s student population could fill a bipartite graph when considering students and on-campus housing arrangements. However, there is currently only enough housing available to guarantee living arrangements for freshmen on campus. As a result, transfers, sophomores, juniors, and seniors are typically left finding housing through Ithaca landlords, many of which provide poor living conditions, including meeting minimum fire and safety codes. To compensate for this, in 2017 Cornell announced a plan to expand on-campus housing options. The plan, which is detailed in The Ithaca Voice’s article entitled Cornell Housing Plans to Add 2,000 Beds by Brian Crandall, will add 2000 beds in the form of multiple new residence and dining halls on North Campus. The goal is to have enough housing to accommodate all transfers and sophomores in addition to the freshman. The motivation for the expansion also stems from a planned increase in each undergraduate class, which will increase total enrollment by over 1,000 students. This increased amount of housing can also put pressure on Ithaca landlords, which are often unaffordable and boast substandard conditions. This plan can also help the Ithaca rent prices market stay stable, or even decrease, instead of rising.
Cornell University’s current student to housing ratio does not fulfill the requirements of a bipartite graph because there is no perfect matching as each student node cannot be matched, or form an edge, with a housing node. The housing deficit, instead, is an example of a constricted set because the set of nodes that represent housing is smaller than the set of nodes that is representative of the student population that would like to utilize on-campus living. It also fulfills the matching theorem, which states that if a bipartite graph has no perfect matching, then it has a constricted set. In addition, the creation of more housing options for students will cause fewer students to resort to off-campus housing. As a result, the rising rent prices for Collegetown apartments could begin to stabilize and landlords may begin to improve units in an effort to incentivize students to live off-campus. In essence, working to make Cornell housing as close to a bipartite graph as possible would provide a multitude of benefits for students.
Sources: https://ithacavoice.com/2017/10/cornell-housing-plans-add-2000-beds/