Database design: Is there a much better way on this current relationships?

Question

I have a facultyand studenttable to store each information, respectively. I made a contacttable to store the contacts of either faculty or student. I would like to use the contact table as a generic one, means it can be used by either faculty or student.

My table diagram is something like this.

I compressed faculty and student into a USER table and have an account type in that table to know whether it is a faculty or student type of user. Then the USER table will have a one is to many relationship with the contact table.

Student

Faculty

Contacts

Student & Faculty = User table
User table -----<- Contact table

Answer 1

True story: I was a student at my school, then I taught there. Then one of the teachers took my class. You need to account for silliness like this.

And a faculty member or student isn't necessarily a user either.

Use table inheritance.

Faculty : Individual : Party

Student : Individual : Party

Where : means inherits.

Party hasOne User

A contact is a relationship between two parties:

Party hasMany ContactRelationships belongsTo Party

See Ready-to-Use Database models example for reference models.