Solution for Lack of Student Housing free essay sample

Over the last few years, Texas State University-San Marcos has seen a significant increase in the number students applying and being admitted to the university. According to Hendricks (2010), from the fall of 2009 to the fall of 2010, the campus saw a 5. 9% increase in the number of students attending the university. In the fall of 2010, the campus reached a new record enrollment of 32,586 students; Out of those, 3,930 were incoming freshman. A vast majority of freshmen and sophomores experience their first two years of college life spread out among the university grounds in dormitories or apartments.In order for many incoming students to attend, they must live on-campus unless they meet the requirements as stated by university policy. Although this seems like a small number of incoming students to provide housing to, many prospective students, especially freshmen, are now experiencing problems when applying for on-campus living. Texas State University Residence Life (n. d. ) policy on student housing requires that in order for a student to be eligible to live off-campus they must have obtained 30 credited hours or be over the age of 20. Although campus living is a first year college experience that many enjoy, currently sophomores, juniors, and even some seniors are allowed to live in these facilities even though they meet the requirements for off-campus living. This is raising questions among the students of Texas State University on the current policy and its negative effects. There are only enough dorms to house 5,745 students and that does not account for Residential Assistants, returning freshmen, and returning upper-classmen. (Texas State University Residence Life, n. . 2) This has generated a waiting list for the students who do not meet the requirements to live off-campus. In previous years, the university has lessened the requirements pertaining to on-campus living; however, there is still not enough housing to provide adequate accommodations for Texas State University Residence Life. With the capacity of students on a steady rise, housing is a critical issue that must be dealt with in an appropriate order to benefit the university as well as incoming freshman that need proper accommodations on-campus.Thus, we must reduce the amount of Texas State Student housing is overdrawn by 20 percent, while still maintaining the educational mission of Texas State University. This includes convenient and safe living for new students that allow for an increased chance of campus involvement and academic assistance. Certain necessary actions are needed in order to reduce or even eliminate the waiting list for incoming and returning freshmen. Problem Description and Analysis Ten years ago, Texas State University had on average 17,000 students.Today, however, there are over 30,000 students attending the university, according to Megan Dupree (personal communication, June 21, 2011), Assistant Director of Housing and Resident Life. Of the 30,000 students, 4,047 are freshmen students here at Texas State University. Policy requires these 4,000 plus freshmen to live on campus if they have less than 30 credit hours and if they are under 19 years of age. This policy is enforced at Texas State University to provide freshmen with a â€Å"safe, comfortable and convenient living environment, while offering opportunities for increased campus involvement, social interaction and academic assistance. (Texas State University Residence Life, n. d. ) However, the policy has not improved Texas State University’s housing situation in the past, as it should. PSU’s general education program and residence life program joined to form â€Å"first-year living-learning communities for freshmen. † Evidence showed in 2009, freshmen that lived on campus had a retention rate of 67 percent. Also in 2009, evidence showed that freshman that joined â€Å"living-learning communities† had a retention rate of 73 percent, raising the retention rate from an average 69 percent. If Texas State’s retention rate is lowered because of the current policy limiting the amount of students gaining the benefits from university programs like â€Å"living-learning communities†, it can affect the school’s budget.Texas State’s reputation will affect how alumni’s degrees are perceived by the work force, as well as lessen the number of graduates. The most destructive cause of the problem is specifically supply and demand. With available living space of campus for 5,604 students, you would assume Texas State has enough room to acquire everyone’s needs. However, 3,790 of those spaces are the only available spaces for freshman because the difference are apartments and upperclassmen â€Å"super suites†. Also, a large percentage of the 5,604 s paces are reserved to athletes of all kinds. The athletics department reserves a specific amount of spaces per year for their athletes to live on-campus because of being under contract. Effects of this amount of space is continuing to kick out upperclassmen that want and need the benefits of on-campus living such as learning communities, residential colleges, etc. Texas State is growing fast and now experiencing limited space and money to expand on-campus living in order to accommodate incoming and returning students and adhere its mission for education policy.The negative effects of this problem are that a percentage of freshmen, as well as a large percentage of upperclassmen, are now not receiving the opportunities that living on-campus provides because there is no structure off-campus. For instance, SLAC is not mandatory, and neither are tutors. By living in the dorms, or on-campus apartments and suites, students have services readily available to them like residential colleges and learning communities. Residential colleges are â€Å"living-learning communities† where students live and go to class with people in the same major. In each room are students who have the same schedules. In each residential college, tutors are available, as well as study groups, and seeing as everyone in that building are taking the same tests at the same time this provides a strong academic community. Learning communities are specifically for a certain dorm or apartment on-campus. For instance, Blanco Hall is a history learning community, where it is available to study and have tutors for history classes in that particular dormitory. Unfortunately, this problem is not one that presents itself immediately.Right now the problem can be ignored because it will be years before the effects on students will affect the university. However, ignoring the problem will only result in a larger problem for the university down the road. For instance, when PSU’s problem was ignored they gained the reputation for having a very low retention rate and had to find solutions to improve their situation quickly. Although there are methods to solve the housing problem, there are also limitations as to what can be done as a solution. No matter what, budget will always be a limitation.Time, space, implementation, staffing, and enforcement are also important things to think about when discussing the limitations on the university. Another important factor in limitation is the interest and needs of the involved students. One of the most important factors when it comes to identifying the problem is the research ability of the group. As a group, reading articles and finding statistics on the current and past housing policies is required. As well as being able to find information of the actual problem and what is currently being done to deal with that specific problem.A lot of what we need to have already available to us is not open for research. Most of our statistics have been calculated by hand to find what we need to prove the problem exists. Other limitations such as time available, location, lack of resources, concrete facts, and daily schedules within group members hinder the advancement of the group’s goal successfully. The outcome trying to be achieved is to create programs that will fill the void left by the ever-changing housing policy, and that will increase the current retention rate by an average of 3 percent without having to continue to limit the policy.Criteria for an Effective Solution The most important criteria for the situation is creating a program that will provide the student’s academic support and encourage relationship building, as wanted by the Mission for Education policy for Texas State University. It should be mandatory given few students will take advantage of a volunteer program, that it counteracts the effects of the overflow housing problem. The least important criterion is that of location, as long as students have the access to academically inclined programs off-campus that normally would be on-campus.Another less important criterion would be the student approval of the requirements for the program. They may dislike it at first, but it will build a fundamental foundation in their college experience. Solution In order to effectively solve the problem at hand, the most fitting solution would be that of University Purpose Networks. This solution is one that is now be implemented throughout universities around the world in order to improve the retention rate while still fulfilling the educational missions in place.There have been issues as to the difference between social networks and purpose networks. According to Troy, Jones, Lynch, and Tomassi (2009), a purpose network is different than a social network as in it helps create success through social and academic communities, which are key for success while attending a un iversity. Troy et al. defines a purpose network as â€Å"an online community intentionally designed to support critical student learning outcomes through peer-to-peer, peer-to-staff and staff-to-peer communication. (2009) To effectively implement this plan, there are guidelines that researchers have come up with in order to enhance the quality of a purpose network. First, the university should begin orientation earlier through a source of online communications so that students have an understanding of what’s going on before even coming to campus for initial orientation. Second, a university should initiate learning communities online that provide platforms for groups so that students known the common goals of academic organizations beforehand.Third, by creating online mentoring system, it will increase the student’s feeling of belongingness to the university. Finally, expand academic intrusive advising so that it requires students to meet with advisors and reach their educatio nal goals rather than falling behind. This new system is the most effective for Texas State University because it allows us to solve a problem without creating another and by overcoming the obstacles in order to find the best solution.Preliminary results from Education Dynamic throughout 20 schools showed that students that were involved in purpose networks showed a 9 percent increase in retention as where students who were not involved, the university showed a 13 percent increase in retention. (Troy et al. , 2009) Implementing the purpose network at Texas State University would solve the problem at hand. In order to put the plan into action, the first step would be to create the host website that the purpose network would run from as well as create the new policy for this program.This would require the university to gather resources such as web designers and administrators to set up the initial website and policy. Once the website is set up, it would then require the university to contact students to let them know of t he new procedure and requirement for purpose networking. This would allow students to become familiar with the system and allow them to give feedback on how it is affecting them. After students have access to the newly built website, it would just be a matter of keeping the site updated and making sure that students are meeting there new requirements.Future problem-solvers that encounter campus housing policy and university missions as a problem should focus on a purpose network to integrate with the campus to solve their problem. They have proven to be effective throughout universities around the world and if integrated into a university system it can promote the mission for education while essentially increasing the retention rate. One obstacle that might stand in the way of some universities is the access to the Internet. With Texas State University this was never an obstacle seeing as how there are plenty of places of for students on campus to access the Internet.