If you build it, they will come: 6 trends to build by, from campus innovators in higher ed housing - Special Report: Campus Housing

University Business, May, 2003 by Jean Marie Angelo, Nicole Rivard

Welcome to the new realities of campus housing. There are more students on campus than ever before, and they're looking for all sorts of amenities--that is, if you want to keep them there. According to college housing consultant and author Jim Grimm, the number of students living on campus has now topped 3 million, up from 2.7 million five years ago. And he should know: As the former housing director for the University of Florida and the co-author of Campus Housing Construction (May 2003, ACUHO-I), he's witnessed a number of emerging trends. At U of Florida, for instance, 90 percent of freshmen come to campus never having shared a bedroom, and it's much the same on campuses across the country, he notes. It's no surprise then, that incoming students are looking for privacy. These same kids have been raised during a time of great abundance in America: They're used to seeing condo complexes with pools and workout rooms in their communities; they're accustomed to Internet access on a 24/7 basis, and having a safe place to study and hang out with friends--but that's only for starters.

Six housing trends are now driving the college admissions market, and becoming true differentiators for campuses looking for a competitive edge, say the experts in this space. How many are on your initiative list?

TREND: PRIVATIZE

For years, housing departments have been relying on off-campus contractors and companies to build dorms or maintain necessary onsite auxiliary services. What they haven't done until fairly recently is privatize--that is, turn to an outside partner to build and maintain an entire housing operation.

Joe Buck, VP of Student Affairs at Armstrong Atlantic State University (GA), is one campus official who has seen privatization as the perfect solution for his housing challenges. His was a commuter campus until just last year, when the need to build more student housing suddenly arose.

"We needed units for students coming in from out of town," explains Buck, but unfortunately, AASU had no housing department.

Buck's solution was to hire a private firm, University Housing Services (www.uhsi.com), to build AASU's Compass Point dormitory via a $9 million bond issue, and maintain the facility year-round. About 5 percent of the university's 6,100 students now live on campus in two- and four-bedroom units. Each unit is designed for shared kitchens, living rooms, and common areas. All units have cable TV, and every room sports an Internet hookup. Compass Point also provides gated parking.

According to the agreement, University Housing keeps management personnel on the site at all times so that students have someone to turn to when an appliance needs repair or if there are more serious concerns. Students pay $375 per month to live in the new dorm, and, just like apartment dwellers, they sign a 12-month lease. University Housing manages the payments and realizes the benefit from any profit.

With an experienced housing partner to speed the process, the entire Compass Point project took one year of planning time, says Buck, who was involved in troubleshooting any problems that arose along the way. He also had to clear a few legal hurdles to complete the project. But it was the lifting of Georgia's one-year restriction on the terms of leasing for university housing that opened up the incentive for private firms to do business with IHEs, Buck explains. He then jumped on the idea of bringing privatized services to Armstrong. His instincts were good; the waiting list for Compass Point grows daily. Still, shut-out students have reason to be hopeful: The school is giving its privatized housing partner the go-ahead to build units for 290 more students.--JMA

TREND: LIVE AND LEARN

The residential learning community movement is an old trend reborn; one that hearkens back to a short-lived program at the University of Wisconsin in the 1920s. Now, however, living/learning communities are springing up in the most interesting places.

By launching 17 residential learning communities in 2000--communities that range from majors-based dorms, to those related to the arts, wellness, and the environment--Syracuse University (NY) has gone where major private research universities have rarely dared to go: The school--which, all-told, will be offering 29 living/learning communities in fall 2003--is making classroom space available in select dorms. Behind the move is the desire (now experienced by a number of IHEs) to move dorm life from Party Central to one that fosters more academic pursuits and enhances the undergraduate learning experience. But campus administrators are anticipating another benefit:

"Certainly, residential learning communities are really designed to improve student learning," says Sandra Hurd, faculty coordinator for Learning Communities at Syracuse, "but you hope that your recruitment and retention go up as a result of that."

And while Syracuse has not yet examined retention data, data collected from other schools participating in learning communities does show that retention rates increase. Creating Learning Communities, a Practical Guide to Winning Support, Organizing for Change, and Implementing Programs (Jodi Levine and Nancy Shapiro, Jossey-Bass, 1999) reveals that in the fall of 1996, learning community participants at Temple University (PA) were retained at a rate 5 percent higher than a comparison group of non-participants. And students enrolled in Freshman Interest Groups (co-enrolled in three courses, and living together) at the University of Missouri-Columbia in 1995 demonstrated a 12 percent higher retention rate than non-participants.