Housing on college campuses - a challenge for students and departments
By Emmy Dumaresq
JRN 100 Staff Reporter
Off-campus housing is taking the college world by storm — but not by choice. Many students are being pushed off campus due to availability issues, rising costs, and lack of basic amenities.
To dive deeper, Haley Deschamps gave insight to what caused the housing shortage and the logistics colleges are considering to ensure they don’t lose profit while also keeping the student body happy. Deschamps is the current Assistant Director of Housing Services at Northeastern University. She previously worked at Endicott College as an Assistant Director of Housing and at Miami University as a Resident Director.
With Deschamps impressive resumé, she has a tremendous amount of experience in higher education and the ins and outs of the college housing game for the past six years.
“In order to bounce back after Covid, most colleges and universities across the country admitted record breaking numbers to their institutions expecting there to be melt. Melt is when students commit to an institution, but then decide to change their plans and no longer attend. Most institutions rely on melt to be sure there is enough access to housing, dining, campus facilities, and more.
After Covid, institutions are not seeing nearly as much melt as students really want to be on campus and have a more traditional college experience. Like airlines, institutions over admit and expect students not to attend, but now that melt is no longer happening as quickly as it did before the pandemic, institutions are left with too many students and not enough resources, like housing on campus.
With the lack of housing, students don’t have access to more independent living — apartment styles, single rooms, as there are much fewer of these styles on campus. This causes students to be frustrated with living in more traditional style halls with no kitchen access, no private bathrooms, and other amenities for a longer period of time,” Deschamps said.
In a 2022 study by Occidental College, the melt problem was dissected. How melt effects enrollment, how the enrollment effects housing, and how housing effects the students and university.
“Meeting targets for the number of students admitted and enrolled is crucial for many institutions of higher education since tuition-based income often serves as a major component of the operating revenue budget,” Occidental College stated.
If needs are not met properly, it could and has driven students away. Or, if needs are met well, it could cause too many students to stay — thus, causing a different housing issue. Either not enough, or too many beds.
There are several logistics that go into housing an entire university’s population — of course, while trying to make everyone happy. However, at the end of the day, it comes down to numbers — which most of the time, those numbers don’t work. This causes the housing departments to have to scramble and put things on hold.
“At Northeastern, we have a program called PAWS — Placement Assistance With Staff. When we are out of housing options for students to select into through housing selection process, we have students fill out paws forms to let us know where they’d like to live. We rely on 2,000+ cancelations over the summer from students whose plans change — whether they go abroad, transfer, go on co-op, or go live off campus, and when those cancellations come in, then we are able to offer housing assignments to students who have paws forms. It’s difficult for students to understand they are guaranteed housing, but they just have to wait until over the summer to be assigned once our vacancies are evaluated,” Deschamps said.
With most issues becoming more apparent after Covid, the next question is will there be an end to the housing shortage? Will colleges and universities be able to keep up with the demand for on campus housing as prices and tempers rise?
“I’m not sure I see it resolving any time soon. I think after some time, students will be too frustrated and just decide to live off campus. However, I don’t believe that off-campus living promotes student success. It is important for students to live on campus to build community, learn more about their independence, and invest in their institution. Institutions either need to cut down on acceptances or come up with a lot of money and space to build more residence halls, which is a lot more difficult,” Deschamps said.
As Deschamps mentioned, students are becoming increasingly frustrated and are reluctantly choosing to live off campus or even feel unable to live on campus. To dig deeper into the student side of things, Northeastern Senior Nicole Moran gave her insight.
Moran has attended Northeastern for the past two years. However, her first year looked a little different than most. She started off her college experience by going abroad. She did not apply or intend for this, but Northeastern accepted her as an NU In student. This means that they are in, however, they have to go abroad for their first semester as there is not enough housing on campus or even in nearby apartments in Boston for the university to rent out for students.
As Northeastern was Moran’s dream school, she knew this would be her only opportunity to attend the university. However, she was worried about the impact this would have on her experience socially, academically, and logistically — as she didn’t plan to be far from family during such a transitional time in her life.
“If I wanted to live on campus, I would have to pay far more than the normal rate — in which I could not afford. I felt it was really my only option to go overseas and start there because the university really gave me no other choice. It definitely impacted my experience, as I felt behind in making friends and getting acquainted with the school and my surroundings. I wonder all the time what it would’ve been like had I been able to live on campus as a first year student,” Moran said.
As this issue continues to rise, there is concern to just how many students lives’ and college experiences it will effect.
Comments
Post a Comment