Fire hazards are the reason as far as I know, but at Emma there's no attempt to work around it really, and a lot of the combi ovens have been replaced with microwaves, which there seems to be absolutely no reason for other than cost.
I think it's partly that the people in charge just don't think about the totality of kitchen facilities and what you can actually cook with access to only a microwave, and there's also an assumption that if you live in college you'll eat in hall for the majority of the time. That's a dangerous assumption because hall food is very restrictive for anybody vegetarian or with dietary requirements, and it would extremely unhealthy for me to eat there for all of my meals. My timetable also doesn't work with that - last term when I was doing evening rehearsals for my play I physically couldn't get to hall, and I would come home anywhere between 10 and midnight and have to go to my boyfriend's house to make my dinner.
It just adds this extra element of irritation to my day because there's no pleasure in eating if my diet is this restricted. I often have sandwiches for dinner because I can't face pasta or baked beans again. If I want to cook properly, or even just have a supermarket pizza or a Chinese ready meal I have to go somewhere else. I can't cook meat at all. Microwaveable food only makes up a very small portion of the supermarket, and it's surprising how many of the ready meals aren't microwaveable either. It's not like there's even another kitchen in my building that I could go to, as we all have our own little kitchens in our rooms. I have to walk to the other side of college and get a friend to let me in if I want to cook anything reasonable. I don't think it's a malicious oversight on the part of college, but I think there is an element of them not really being willing to sit down and say 'okay, how can we enable our students to feed themselves?'. Emma is really really good at looking after its students, but it does sometimes feel like they don't really let us look after ourselves. I think that's partly just me having come back from living completely on my own on my year abroad and having to adapt to the restrictions of college life though.