How many beds per room

When we were discussing about the hostel design, One issue which came up is how many beds per room.

Both Prof. Ajit K Das and I have studied in single rooms (Single bedded really) in IIT Kharagpur. In IIMB, it was single rooms all the way. In XIMB, it was common to have single rooms.

However, we had studied in an era with few students (In my batch in IIT, we had 30 students in Electrical Department). It was also an era when Government made the education virtually free. Today, it is very different. The strength in a class is high. Hence, today in IITs, single rooms are no longer available. Investment per bed turns prohibitively high if you choose a single bedded. Hence accommodation charges will be high if we choose single bedded hostels.

Do different types education need types of hostels? We felt that under-graduate students will benefit from company in their room. A chum in the room will provide emotional and other forms of support which will be needed for young kids just out of home. However, post-graduate students being mature perhaps will benefit from solitude and privacy.

Hence, we felt that multi-format hostels capable of accomodating single bed and more than one bed would be a good idea. We will have a combination of single bedded, double bedded and triple bedded rooms to meet needs of different categories of students