Half My Universities Are Empty

[mbutton15]

It's something I've noticed on all my maps really, but now it's really starting to bug me - Half my universities have 0 students.

If I look at the lower and middle schools they all seem to have roughly the same amount of students as each other. This makes sense as they are evenly distributed. In fact, I've even put lower schools in industrial zones and they still get the same number of students as those in residential areas.

This just isn't happening with my universities. Is this a bug or caused by some factor I'm not aware of ?

Here's a couple of cities...
3 out of 6 universities not used:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1216198147
4 out of 7 universities not used:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=923762489

Any thoughts are welcome.

[onezerorising]

Well look, as you're an experienced player and contributor to these here threads, I kinda feel like I shouldn't even dare to try and 'criticise', but here goes anyways, even as I suspect you already considered and discounted these reasons:

First up, have you got that stupid 'prefer work over education' policy enabled? I forget what it is really called, but I'm sure you know what I mean.

Second, (because I am a) lazy and b) not really sure how these downloadables (maps) work), Do you have sufficient eligible students to fill your universities? I ask this specifically because, (before I built the Hadron Collider and stopped thinking about education altogether), because I never DID see university use seem anything like I expected. To enlarge upon this theme: I would see (say) 2000 students in elementary, 2000 in high school, and, I don't know.... 376 in Uni. Or, if you prefer, completely uncorrelated uni-attendance.

I'm not sufficiently experienced or qualified to call it a bug, but I rather suspect it's a 'feature of the game design'.

[grapplehoeker]

Education is a service and just like all service providers, it's coverage is citywide. The difference between an educational facility and other service providers is that students will travel from all over the city to get there, rather than have a service vehicle go out.
So, there is no need to spam lots of schools or universities in different areas, since they provide equal citywide coverage wherever they are. As long as your total capacity is enough for the amount of potential students in the whole city, then you're covered.
The only reason for locating any in a specific part of your city will be for the purposes of gaining a beneficial boost to your local happiness (that's what the green area of 'coverage' depicts).
You just have to provide the means for students to get to their schools.

[onezerorising]

@grapplehoeker, see, that's what I meant. How come you went and put it so much better?

[grapplehoeker]

Originally posted by onezerorising:

@grapplehoeker, see, that's what I meant. How come you went and put it so much better?

I drank some good coffee ;)

[onezerorising]

<see this as a cool 'thumbs up' emoji>

[mbutton15]

OK, so checking the top map (Death Wave) I do not have the Education Boost policy. The basic city layout is a ring of residential surrounding the commercial/industry/offices:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1192377491 You can probably just make out the universities spread equally on the inner side of the big octagon. There are 1280 actual students (about 3500 eligible) and the buildings contain 157 / 0 / 0 / 561 / 562 / 0 students as you circle round.

Yes I've placed so many universities to get the level up influence of providing the service. But as each uni is next to residential I would expect all to have students. If I delete an occupied uni then the students will find a new one to attend. They will happily use one that previously had 0 students so that proves they can at least take in students - why don't they ?


The Springdale map is similar with around 3500 eligible and 1679 actual students. The split is 654 / 657 / 368 and the rest 0. Again, all uni's have residential on their doorstep.