Talking Stick - September/October 2009 - 10

JUST IN Why Is Occupancy Increasing? GUNS ON CAMPUS – A LEGISLATIVE UPDATE Several colleges and universities are experiencing an overﬂow in the residential student population this year. One reason for the higher rate of occupancy is thought to be the impact of the economy. There is no question that the economy is causing loss of jobs, which leads some to ask: Has it become easier to go back to school with the assistance of ﬁnancial aid, taking advantage of an opportunity to seek better education with the hope of a better job in two to four more years? Some say yes. The students who are able to go away to college may be ﬁnding that living on campus provides economical options for not only the room but also for meals. Having the bill for room and meals added to tuition makes it easier to take advantage of ﬁnancial aid or payment options. Another reason for increasing occupancy may be the number of graduating high school students, which was expected to peak in 2008 and then slowly decline until 2015, according to the Western Interstate Commission on Higher Education. For example, The Dallas Morning News reported that Highland Park High School, an afﬂuent school in Dallas, Texas, has a 98 percent rate of seniors that continue on to college. The effect of this happening at high schools nationwide made recruiting efforts highly active this year. Also, the Commission predicts that there will be a decline in afﬂuent high school graduates, and they project that the pool of college candidates will become more diverse in the next few years. Thus institutions will make recruiting efforts more substantial toward low income and international students in states that are projected to have the highest rate of high school graduates. Other reasons for over occupancy remain a mystery. For example, Ithaca College in New York experienced an unforeseen surge in their incoming class this year. “We are really not sure what to attribute the large size of this class to,” says Director of Residence Life Bonnie Solt Prunty. “In order to try to meet our target, they really actively pursued students who wanted Ithaca College as their ﬁrst-choice school. They also made some modiﬁcations to the ﬁnancial aid packaging strategy. However, we would not have anticipated this response from those changes.” Upon realizing in May that they were signiﬁcantly overoccupied, Prunty and her staff kicked into high gear. Their strategy included contracting for local hotel space and building a 104-bed modular residence hall scheduled to open by August 23. They also used monetary incentives such as paying upperclass students $2,000 to move off campus or $500 to move from larger double rooms that they wanted to convert to triples. And, ﬁnally, they created 200 extended-occupancy triples and 200 extended-occupancy lounge spaces and offered a gap-year program where incoming students could receive up to a $10,000 tuition credit if they deferred admission to fall 2010. 10 TALKING STICK

Talking Stick - September/October 2009

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