When Gwen Dungy moved onto the Eastern Illinois University campus in the mid-1960s, her dorm was brand-new. Colleges throughout the country were on building binges in anticipation of the first round of college-age baby boomers.

When Dungy took her son to college in 1988, she was appalled at dorm conditions – concrete walls and beds the size of prison cots. After decades of use, dorms on campuses everywhere were utilitarian and ugly. Dungy rationalized the substandard conditions by thinking, “Well, he won’t be in the room much.”

Now, as executive director of the NASPA, a national group for student-affairs administrators in higher education, Dungy visits campuses across the U.S. She also writes and speaks on modern student life.

When she heard that Washington State University will embark on a 10-year, $200 million dorm building and renovation blitz, she wasn’t surprised. WSU has now joined a national college trend to build upscale dorms. The reasons aren’t just cosmetic:

“Updated dorms help with recruitment. Many members of the current college-age generation is used to privacy, luxury and having their needs met by attentive parents. These parents helicopter into their high-schoolers’ college tours. They don’t rationalize substandard dorms, the way Dungy’s generation of parents did. Instead, they complain or look elsewhere.

“They make decisions based on residence halls,” she said.

“Updated dorms help with safety, no small concern after the Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois University shootings. Newer dorms have state-of-the-art security cameras, secured doors and high-tech alert systems.

“Updated dorms help with retention. Courses and grades are only part of the retention equation. College students who stay in school and graduate tend to be satisfied with the student life component of their experience; residence halls are a big part of this satisfaction, Dungy said.

Why should taxpayers who help finance state education care about retention and graduation rates? States with educated labor forces attract high wage-paying businesses and institutions.

Like almost all campuses with newer, upscale housing, WSU will charge more for the nicer dorms. WSU must figure out ways to draw lower-income students into those dorms, so that campus living doesn’t split off between the haves and have-nots.

WSU’s new dorms will be financed, in part, by student fees. This upscale trend in residence halls conveys respect for students’ modern needs, Dungy said. In return, students must be educated to respect and care for these more private, luxurious dorms, an innovative experiment in 21st century college living.