The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 44, No. 2 - 49
Why Students Move Off Campus
METHOD
The Study Setting
This study was conducted at a small private
university in the Pacific Northwest with an
enrollment of approximately 3,700 undergraduates. The university has nine traditional residence halls, each of which has half the rooms
dedicated to first-year students and the other
half to returning students in other grade levels.
There are also two buildings with four- to seven-person apartments reserved for juniors and
seniors. These apartments have a mixture of
single and double bedrooms, and occupants
share one or two bathrooms, a living room, a
kitchen, and a washer and dryer. Approximately 2,200 students live on campus in either the
traditional halls or the apartments. First-year
students are required to live on campus unless
granted an exemption to live at home. The university also owns a small number of houses
in the area surrounding campus, housing approximately 80 students each year. There are
no social fraternities or sororities at this university and no themed housing aside from one
university-owned house designated for the
honors program.
Participants
On-campus residents at this university are
asked annually to complete a comprehensive feedback survey about their experience
in campus housing. For the purposes of this
study, I added two question sets (described
below) to the annual survey in fall 2015. In that
year, 73.2% of all campus residents responded
to the survey, with 70.9% of all residents completing the entire survey (N = 1,427). For the
limited demographic questions asked, the re-
spondents were representative of the on-campus population: 49% were first-year students
and 57% were female. The feedback survey
is anonymous, so no additional information
could be connected to the students' individual
responses.
I distributed the online survey via Qualtrics
to all on-campus residents near the end of November 2015. It was kept open for three weeks.
Students who completed the entire survey
were presented with a link to a separate form
where they could enter a drawing for a $50
Amazon gift card, with one winner chosen per
hall. A hall pizza party was also offered as an
incentive to the residence hall with the highest
response rate.
Although the focus tends to be
on students moving off campus
(and on the accompanying lost
revenue), it is worth exploring what
drives students to want to stay in
campus housing . While students
seeking off-campus housing tend
to place importance on cost,
privacy, and independence, students
seeking to return to campus
housing tend to value convenience,
connection, and support .
V o l u m e 4 4 , No. 2 * 2 0 1 8
49
The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 44, No. 2
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 44, No. 2
Contents
The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 44, No. 2 - Intro
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