Interest in Canada's Student Housing Market Growing Rapidly

Only 16% of undergraduate students live in on-campus housing according to the 2011 Canadian University Survey Consortium (see Table 8). Twice that number live in rental housing off-campus. How would you describe the type of off-campus housing that undergrads live in? After my experience today at the Canadian Student Housing Symposium I can guarantee that a decade from now student housing off-campus will be described in a very different way.


The symposium was hosted by Derek Lobo and his company Rock Apartment Advisors.  In the morning we received insight into the Canadian rental market over the past half century, heard about how to finance student housing and heard from Campus Living Centres (CLC), American Campus Communities (ACC) and Domus Student Housing on management of student housing. The second half had us travel to three ACC properties at the University of Buffalo in Amherst, New York.

Student Housing has been changing over the past decade and in the next decade the change will become bigger and much more noticeable. Hot tubs, large game rooms, indoor basketball courts, model suites available year round to attract new residents, in-unit laundry, a bathroom inside each bedroom and walk-in closets are just some of the features now included. 

About 100 people attended today's symposium with the vast majority looking to or already investing in purpose built student housing properties. The days of student's renting basement apartments is about to become a thing of the past. For-profit student housing providers are learning, adjusting and offering impressive properties for reasonable rates.

How do you feel about these changes to the Canadian student housing market?



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The Animal House teachable moment

Earlier in my career I would hear references made to how living in residence was like the 1978 movie Animal House.These references faded over time until recently when I heard it again. Having never seen the movie I decided it was time I sat down and watched it. Turns out I will never get those two hours back!

Animal House was awful! Aside from being a comedy with little humour and no plot line the story has virtually no resemblance to what it is actually like to live in residence aside from the fact that accommodations were "provided" on a college campus. For instance, residence is not a frat house, alcohol consumption is greatly exaggerated (see social norms study) and accommodations are hardly a dump (see most beautiful residences).

Should you encounter someone who uses Animal House as an analogy for living in residence stop them immediately and counter them with points like these:

• “Powerful learning occurs in situations where people come to know each other as friends”  (Chickering & Reisser, p. 399). -- see Persuasion for more evidence
• Students who live on campus are more likely to persist in higher education
• You can start a company and make millions or billions

What poor analogies have you heard someone make about a student's experience or the supports in place to help students be successful?

Persuading my colleagues outside student affairs

In an increasingly interdependent world where many points of view must be weaved together for any initiative to achieve success being persuasive is an important skill. Different strategies can be used to be persuasive.   

One strategy you can use to persuade someone is to relate your point to your audience's experience. To that end, I have recently started to explain to colleagues how our lives, in general, have seen a blurring of the lines between personal and professional in an effort to convey that our students learn inside and outside the classroom. I believe that institutions who understand this phenomenon, and leverage it, can greatly enhance learning and development opportunities for students. 

Using evidence to make a point is another obvious strategy that can be used to persuade someone. When it comes to the power of living on campus I have found myself going back to the 2007 submission I made to Ryerson's Master Planning exercise where I opened with the following:

“Powerful learning occurs in situations where people come to know each other as friends”  (Chickering & Reisser, p. 399).  On a university campus these friendships can form in many places, but one of the best locations for friendships to form is in a residence hall.  Living in residence has been proven to enhance the student experience.  The following points from Pascarella and Terenzini (2005) summarize some of the key findings of research on residence living. When compared to students living off-campus, students living on-campus are:

• more likely to participate in extracurricular activities
• report more positive perceptions of the campus social climate
• tend to be more satisfied with their college experience and report more personal growth and development
• engage in more frequent interactions with peers and faculty members
• more likely to persist to graduation

What is your favourite persuasive technique? 


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Re:educating Higher Education

Are we on the precipice of major change to higher education? The internet has dramatically altered the way we listen to music, access news, read books, view movies, buy products and much more. The way we learn has, so far, remained largely unchanged while other industries have been turned upside down and inside out. 

The signs that major change is coming to those of us in higher education are all around us. Consider these developments:

• Government debt levels are so high that public funding that has been available to higher education for the past half century will diminish significantly or even end altogether
• Knowledge and information is accumulating more rapidly, requiring people to learn and develop almost constantly to remain relevant in the workforce
• For-profit education institutions are much more active in the education field - The University of Phoenix is a high profile example
• Online education has been growing more rapidly than traditional forms of education - MOOCs, such as Coursera, are the latest evolution in online education

Shrinking resources are often a catalyst for change in an organization. When growing demand, increased competition and new methods to deliver services are added to the mix, change expands beyond an organization to a whole industry. 

Ironically, we are about to learn a whole lot about the higher learning industry in the coming years. In an effort to kick start the dialogue "the Globe and Mail will introduce Re:education [tomorrow], an ongoing series that explores the legacy of Canada's university system and identifies new opportunities to thrive in the 21st century. Re:education examines several threads of our current model from the evolution of the lecture hall to digital learning and the role of the private sector in overcoming financial strains. The series has been shaped with commentary and insights from industry influencers and thought leaders from Canada and abroad." 

Check out more here: www.ourtimetolead.ca and be sure to join the discussion beginning tomorrow (Saturday, October 6).
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