The collapse of a five-storey private paying guest (PG) accommodation in Delhi’s Satya Niketan on Sunday (September 6), which killed at least seven people and injured several others, has brought the city’s student accommodation shortage into focus.
While other renowned central institutions for higher education, like IIT-Delhi and AIIMS, can accommodate around 50% and 70% of their total students in their hostels, respectively, Delhi University’s share is much lower. At IIT, too, the death of a second-year MSc Physics student on August 22 triggered a week-long student protest, with his family members alleging that denial of hostel accommodation had affected his mental health.
What is the situation in DU, and how do student-housing arrangements shape access to and inclusivity in higher education? We explain.
DU’s limited hostel capacity
According to DU’s Annual Report for 2024-25, the university had 2,10,907 undergraduate students, 34,520 postgraduate students, including PhD students, and 6,047 students in certificate/ Diploma/ PG Diploma on rolls. The total number of students enrolled in conventional mode (barring those enrolled in distance mode and others) was over 2.5 lakh.
“At present, more than half of the students come from states other than Delhi,” the report noted. Despite its large outstation student body, the university’s hostel capacity is estimated at around 9,000 beds. This is spread across 20 standalone hostels often meant for post-graduate students (such as Gwyer Hall in North Campus) and those attached to some colleges.
This existing hostel capacity is also not uniformly available to all students. Several university-run facilities are earmarked for particular categories or programmes: Aravalli, for instance, houses postgraduate and research students, while Saramati is primarily for postgraduate men from the Northeast and other postgraduate and research students at South Campus. The university’s Post-Graduate Men’s Hostel in North Campus, inaugurated in 1975, began with just 100 single rooms.
The few institutions that have hostels include Daulat Ram College, Hindu College, Kirori Mal College, Miranda House, Hansraj College, Shri Ram College of Commerce in North Campus and Sri Venkateswara College, Maitreyi College and Lady Shri Ram College for Women in South Campus.
However, they generally accommodate only a fraction of the total student body. For example, while Hansraj College mentions a student body of over 5,000 across undergraduate and graduate-level courses on its website, fewer than 250 undergraduate students can access the hostel residence.
The growth of PGs
Satya Niketan is located at a walkable distance from institutions such as Sri Venkateswara College, Motilal Nehru College (Day and Evening), Aryabhatta College, and Ram Lal Anand College along Benito Juarez Marg.
Other colleges, including Atma Ram Sanatan Dharma College, Delhi College of Arts and Commerce, Jesus and Mary College and Maitreyi College, are also located nearby. Of these, Motilal Nehru, ARSD, JMC and DCAC do not have on-campus hostels. This gap allows conveniently located buildings to offer PG accommodations. In North Campus, Mukherjee Nagar and Hudson Lane are some prominent localities offering these services.
A lane in Satya Niketan, Delhi. (Express photo by Praveen Khanna)
A North-South campus disparity also exists, stemming from the university’s historical development. Established in 1922, Delhi University first grew around its older North Campus colleges and departments.
South Campus was established only in 1973 as part of the university’s expansion, initially to facilitate access for South Delhi residents, and shifted to its present location near Dhaula Kuan in 1984. To ease access, the university heavily relied on mobility rather than residential provisions. In the pre-Metro Rail era, the ‘U-Special’ bus service was introduced in the 1970s to connect students living across Delhi with university campuses. It was revived in 2025 with electric buses that covered DU colleges and other institutions in their routes.
More recently, the outstation students’ demographic underwent a change after the Common University Entrance Test (CUET) became the new method for admission in 2022-23. While women students’ enrolment has increased year-on-year, the share of incoming outstation students from Tier-2 and Tier-3 centres across Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Madhya Pradesh has also grown. Student admissions from Kerala have dropped.
Out of 55,000 admissions, the Bihar School Examination Board emerged as the third-largest feeder overall with 1,280 admissions, closely followed by the Uttar Pradesh Board with 1,222, the Rajasthan Board with 765, the Haryana Board with 436, and the Madhya Pradesh Board with 312.
Why hostel access matters
As a public university, DU offers low-cost public education that can make quality education accessible to diverse sections of society. But concerns about the cost and safety of accommodation can often serve as a barrier for many who aspire to enrol.
Rituparna Patgiri, an Assistant Professor of Sociology at IIT Guwahati, whose research has examined food, community and exclusion in university hostel spaces in Delhi, told The Indian Express, “Access to hostel accommodation has a significant bearing on students’ mental well-being and vulnerability. For outstation students, the absence of such support places them on an unequal footing from the outset, as they navigate an already high-pressure academic environment. And even within these residential spaces, questions of food, identity and belonging shape who is able to feel fully included in campus life.”
Patgiri lived in multiple hostels in Delhi across DU and Jawaharlal Nehru University from 2012 to 2020. “For many women, it would be very challenging to come to a new city and set up residence if not for hostel accommodations. Many families may not allow independent staying arrangements. Hostels thus play a crucial role in building relationships in young people’s lives, particularly migrant and women students,” she said.
Looking for housing shifts the burden onto the outstation students to find safe, comfortable and affordable housing, which can breed insecurity and ultimately boils down to the financial capabilities of a student, she added.
Unplanned urban villages such as Satya Niketan, Munirka, Mahipalpur, and pockets of GTB Nagar in North Campus have emerged as high-density student hubs, flanked by peri-urban pockets in Moti Bagh, Nanakpura, and the Dhaula Kuan periphery. In comparison, higher-income students seek flats in Chanakyapuri and South Extension, with rents as high as Rs 20,000, points out prominent urban planner and author Suptendu Biswas.
“The larger issue is that this transformation has largely happened through incremental rental boom and commercialisation, rather than through a planned student-housing strategy,” Biswas said.
Globally, various models have been adopted to address student housing shortages in popular higher education destinations. Purpose-Built Student Accommodation (PBSA) is a popular mechanism where residential developments are constructed and operated specifically for university students, distinct from residential properties converted into PG facilities or standard rental homes.
The model is used widely in the UK and Australia. London, for instance, requires such developments to be well-connected by public transit, mandates that a minimum of 35% of bedrooms are secured as affordable student accommodation, and majority of rooms must be formally tied to higher education institutions through nomination agreements.
Rescue underway a day after a building collapsed at Satya Niketan in New Delhi on Sunday. (Express photo by Praveen Khanna) 
A lane in Satya Niketan, Delhi. (Express photo by Praveen Khanna)
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