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September 22, 2008

Room and Board


I had not fully understood the burst of dorm-building at community colleges in Upstate New York. Here's the Student Housing page from Finger Lakes Community College. And from Monroe (that's Rochester) CC.

This piece from Inside Higher Ed's Confessions of a Community College Dean made me think a little more about what's going on:Perversely Enough, We're Upscaling.

I knew that recessions (or economic slowdowns, since I'm really not interested in splitting semantic hairs here) generally bring increased enrollments at cc's. The reasons are straightforward enough: the opportunity cost of education is lower when jobs are scarce, the need for a degree is higher when jobs are scarce, and our low tuition becomes much more attractive when things get precarious. This is old news. People who otherwise might have gone somewhere more expensive will take a second look at the local cc when money is an issue.

Unless - and this was the part I didn't realize - they're so ridiculously broke that the logic circles around. According to my source, who's in a position to know, some of our increasing number of homeless (or intermittently homeless) students are actually transferring to four-year schools earlier than they would prefer. The draw is financial aid for dorm rooms and meal plans.

Financial aid at the cc only covers tuition, fees, and a (low) estimate for books.* It doesn't do anything for living expenses, which aren't getting any cheaper. But financial aid at the nearby residential four-year colleges includes room and board. If you're intermittently homeless, the prospect of aid covering a place to live and a meal plan is nothing to sneeze at.

So the perverse impact of the economic downturn is that we get more people from the upper end of the economic scale, since they're playing it safer by choosing the low-cost option, and fewer people from the lower end, since we don't offer subsidized room and board. Perversely enough, we're upscaling.

And here's the Monroe CC faq where we ask and learn the answer to "Can Financial Aid be used to cover the cost of living in the MCC Residence Halls?"

Quick answer, yes, depending on eligibility.

When I first read about the new dorms going up for FLCC I figured it was a way to get money out of the state-run bonding entity, the Dormitory Authority of the State of New York, and use it to build revenue-generating dorms. After all, we funded our new dorms the same way at about the same time

I'm used to the mission-statement version of Residence Life - that we foster the whole person by providing housing and programming. I also knew a little about the financing of dorms. I had never really thought that NOT having dorms could in certain circumstances cause a higher transfer rate out from community colleges to four-year schools. The Higher Education Industrial Complex never ceases to surprise.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at September 22, 2008 4:01 PM