The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 44, No. 2 - 57

Why Students Move Off Campus

. . . student values related to
housing are not static over time .
Where students used to value
well-maintained facilities and
then came to value programming
and involvement in the halls,
this study and other recent ones
provide evidence that students
may be moving toward a greater
emphasis on independence and
private space .

1994; Twale & Damron, 1992). One finding of
the current study that corroborated this was the
greater importance given by current or future
off-campus students to the ability to cook one's
own meals, something Li et al. (2005) found
to be the greatest predictor of a student planning to move off campus. At the university
where the current study was undertaken, all
students on campus must purchase a meal
plan, even those in apartments with a kitchen.
However, the factor ability to choose whether to
have a campus meal plan did not significantly
differentiate either between on-campus and
off-campus students or between students planning to stay on campus and those planning to
leave. This suggests that it is not the mandatory meal plan but the lack of access to one's
own kitchen-rendering a student dependent
on the food served at the dining hall-that is
most likely to drive a student off campus.

A final theme that could be seen among the
factors important to students living or planning to move off campus was related to university housing policies, something not examined
closely by previous research. The factor university housing policies was rated significantly more
often by students living off campus as a top
factor in their decision of where to live that year,
and open-ended comments on the off-campus
student survey specifically named the policy of
limiting visiting hours between students of different genders as a reason for moving out of
campus housing. This is closely tied to the idea
of greater independence off campus. Other
specific housing policies were explicitly named
on the survey: Students were more likely to
be living or plan to live off campus if it was
important to them to live in housing during
break periods or to live with family members
or friends who were not students at the same
university. Future research could include additional housing policies (e.g., not being able
to keep pets) to determine which policies have
the largest effect on students' housing decisions and also whether these are specifically
viewed as threats to one's independence.
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. This is similar to previous findings about what students remaining
on campus value most (Cleave, 1996; Li et al.,
2005; Popelka, 1994). The results of this study
indicate that students who value the support

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The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 44, No. 2

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