After breaking another enrollment record this fall, some students at the University of South Carolina said they have faced issues regarding atypical housing placements and classroom overcrowding.
USC enrolled 7,829 freshmen for the 2025 fall semester, making the student population over 40,000, according to a press release from Associate Vice President for University Communications Jeff Stensland. According to the USC Trend of Enrollment Dashboard, the school has steadily increased its student body by at least 1,000 students a year.
“(This) year, nearly twice as many students from South Carolina were offered enrollment to the Columbia campus compared to a decade ago,” the release read.
The university recently started transforming Campus Village Building 1 lounge spaces into dorms for students in need of housing for the 2025-26 school year.
First-year advertising student Emily Ikner lives in a lounge room and said the housing process started when she was waitlisted by University Housing. Ikner said the housing deadline had already passed by the time she was taken off the waitlist in early July to find out her room assignment.
Ikner and her roommates received an email with the specifics of their housing assignment since they were unable to choose for themselves. There was no coordinating room decor with each other because they did not know what the converted lounge room would look like, Ikner said.
”We knew it was going to be a lounge room, because when we got the housing thing back, it told us the four people I was gonna be with, and it said lounge,” Ikner said.
According to a statement from University Spokesperson Collyn Taylor, Campus Village Building 1 is the only building utilizing lounge rooms as spaces for residents in order to have enough room to fit the freshmen on campus.
“This is not unique to USC’s campus, and we’ve been communicating regularly with our students and sharing pertinent updates,” the statement read. “Our staff is working diligently to place students in available beds as they become available on campus.”
Ikner said she has not received any update on what will happen to her and her roommates throughout the year. Because of this, she said she believes they will be in the lounge room for the entire school year.
As of Sept. 3, Ikner only has three roommates, though it varies for each lounge room, she said. Some lounge rooms house one person, while others have up to six people in a space, according to Ikner.
Ikner said having a traditional pod-style dorm like all other Campus Village rooms is what she would prefer but that living in the lounge rooms is not all that bad. She said it could be hard to live with up to six people if someone is not an easy-going person, but Ikner and her roommates said they are making the most of it.
Ikner’s roommate, first-year undecided student Julia Boehm, said because they are in a common room, she thinks the school should accept a fewer number of students. Boehm said they have used up all the possible housing space, and there is not much else that can be done.
“I think we made the best of it. It's definitely not traditional, but it is a lot of space, so I feel like we flipped it around pretty well,” Boehm said.
USC is currently renovating other student housing. McBryde is set to be demolished next spring and replaced with a larger building with more beds. Alongside that project, a third residential wing will be added to the Honors College.
Record enrollment has not only impacted student housing, but class sizes and registration as well.
Third-year criminal justice and criminology student Morgan Rushton said classrooms are overfilled, leaving some students without a seat in classes.
"People are not willing to move or give them (seats) up," Rushton said. "I think someone straight up walked out of our class yesterday and then that led to an open seat."
Students have also faced challenges with registering for classes due to class sizes and not having enough sections to take classes.
Emily Daniel, a second-year elementary education student, said she was frustrated during class registration because required classes were not available, forcing her to find substitutes due to a lack of room.
"I had to email my advisor at least three times trying to find classes that I could substitute for other ones that I'll have to take even next semester or semesters after because they're not available in the spring semester," Daniel said.
DegreeWorks can only help so much because even substitution classes can get filled easily too, Daniel said. It would be helpful to find professors to teach more classes so students are not "left in the dust" for not being able to find the classes needed, she said.