The dining room looks less like a treatment centre than a residential university hall.
Vishva-Bharati is a residential university (incorporated 1951) with an international student body, hostels, and extensive grounds.
After reading it, L. Rafael Rief, M.I.T.'s president, asked Mr. Cusumano to serve on a task force on the "residential university" of the future, including online initiatives.
There was also Geoffrey Crossick, the University of London's vice-chancellor, warning of a "future dystopia" in which the residential university experience becomes "socially restricted", and there is "much less social mobility".
He added: "I do think that although going away from home for three years for a residential university course is going to remain a widespread option, it is not the only option".
"Our central value is people and the human experience of faculty working with students in classrooms and laboratories, and students learning from each other, and the kind of intensive environment we create in our residential university".
"The purpose of our loan programs goes right to the heart of several decades of sustained and successful effort at N.Y.U.: to transform N.Y.U. from a regional university into a world-class research residential university," John H. Beckman, the university spokesman, said in an e-mail.
The typical modern residential university may enroll 30,000 or more students and educate both undergraduates and graduate students in the entire range of the arts and humanities, mathematics, the social sciences, the physical, biological, and earth sciences, and various fields of technology.
