When the only people who can afford to live in Manhattan are those in the financial sector* and students, you’re of course going to get more dorms:

Columbia’s brand-new 17-acre campus in Harlem. Six million square feet of additional space for NYU dorms and classrooms, stretching from Washington Square to the outer boroughs. A Fordham “fortress” springing up on the Upper West Side.

Colleges and universities are forecasting unprecedented growth in the coming years, adding as much as 17 million square feet of space — or more than either the World Trade Center or the controversial Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn — and may begin to exert an even greater influence on the ebb and flow of life in the city.

“Our fear is that the neighborhood could be overwhelmed by these institutions that they have played host to for 150 years,” said Andrew Berman of the Greenwich Village Society for Historical Preservation.

Berman and other neighborhood advocates fear that the low-rise character of the neighborhood could become overrun by packs of college students and tall dorms to house them.

“It becomes a stage set instead of a real urban neighborhood, or company town where everything around you is run by a single entity,” Berman said.

*Whoops — sorry about that recession, guys . . .