The attractions of the campus for the novelist are clear enough - the closed space, the clear power relations and the mismatch between the life of the mind and the life of the academic.

The abundant supply of nubile young bodies and the underlying sense that [the writers'] best days are already behind them, perhaps?

[The] university represents the flowering of exciting experiences, both intellectually and emotionally. It's not surprising that this would be a popular setting for novelists.

What's the appeal? Maybe it's just that you can have an eccentric cast of characters (the academics) in a situation from which they can't easily escape (not unlike an old fashioned country house murder mystery), they have time on their hands for all sorts of mischief, there's an awful lot of political manoeuvring, and grudges are formed and held (plus nubile young students to stir things up a bit).