The Value of Campus Housing

The most popular topic to discuss further, by far, at both the Canadian Chief Housing Officer summit this past Novermber and the CAUBO student housing workshop in April was the value campus housing adds to post-secondary education.

At the CAUBO workshop Mike Porritt, McGill's ExecutiveDirector of Residences and Student Housing, did an excellent job of setting the stage to discuss the value added by campus housing by highlighting research as well as McGill data related to the residence life. With his permission here are the slides he used to kick start an hour long discussion:

More PowerPoint presentations from Glen

In broad terms Mike highlighted, on slide four, the biggest influence on retention rate shown by research comes from:

• Engagement with faculty
• Engagement with peers / residence life staff

More specifically, Mike highlighted, on slide five, that the retention rate for students at McGill is higher when they live in residence which his consistent with the broad research findings. At the most recent OACUHO conference Western University shared similar retention rate results and during my time at Ryerson we found similar retention rate results. With retention rate being one of the key performance indicators used to measure an institutions performance campus housing professionals have a prime opportunity to point these types of findings out to colleagues and decision makers.

What have you done to tell others about the value student housing adds to your institution?





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