Five years ago, you could hold a ten-foot-poll and walk through the University Center at Nova Southeastern University and not touch anyone. Now it feels more packed than ever. This is not just the case for the UC but classrooms, dorms, and the food options on campus all look like a bustling little city.
The 2020 vision planned to expand NSU’s campus and student population. There were plenty of bumps along the way such as a lack of parking on campus, overcrowded dorms and a Squid Game-esque rush to register for classes.
This also raises questions about how NSU will accommodate all the new students they receive each year. The school’s relentless growth has already presented many problems for campus life and will continue to test the capacity of how many people the campus can actually hold.
Whenever classes get out, for example, there is a stampede of people walking from the UC to the Desantis building or vice versa. The amount of people is shocking, especially examining what campus life used to look like at NSU and how little incoming class sizes were. Now every single facility has a dramatically higher number of people present than ever before.
A great selling point of NSU was the small class sizes. Although not all majors have been impacted by the growing population equally, even some of the smaller colleges are seeing classes fill up faster than before. What is worrying is that this could lead to larger class sizes, erasing what was a determining factor for choosing NSU for many people.
Even with all of these drawbacks, it still seems like something special to see.
There is a certain heart-warming feeling to walk through the UC and feel like a busy college campus. There are people riding by on skateboards, sitting down in groups talking, getting in line for food and tables recruiting for clubs. Not saying all of this did not happen before, but it feels more full now.
The way campus feels after such large class sizes have enrolled in the school year-after-year is great. The school feels more like a college campus and a community. This reality presents problems that the NSU administration will have to deal with accordingly the same way that other major schools like FIU and FSU do. NSU’s undergraduate program will soon enter that level.
Even though there are advantages and disadvantages to the population on campus, I believe ultimately it is a good thing as it improves the overall quality of events on campus and campus life.
