I took my sanity walk, out at MSU yesterday and noticed the new wood-framed building the was a power plant is nearly finished and is a really beautiful building, the contemporary design is very cool. Also, the new Music Provillian looks very nice with its new wing referencing the details of the older building. The gardens and flowering trees are blooming nicely too.
Suprised the local media didn't make more noise about this. This is going to change the local development patterns quite a bit. It's going to mean smaller demand for student housing for sure.
Yes, this is really big news and the articles I read didn't extrapolate enough into the effects of this change as well as the motivations behind it.
What I see is that MSU had known for a while that increased years living on campus led to higher graduation rates. When I was an RA (Resident Mentor) in the mid-2000's they told us this and wanted us to give our students a good live-on experience so they would come back. It seems that Covid has given them the right cover to make this change as well as financial pressure too.
Off-campus student housing basically had 3-4 years of rent per student (assuming students graduate in 4-5 years, which covers most though some statistics only measure 6-year graduation rates). This change will reduce the number of years students live off-campus to 2-3 years, which would be roughly a 28% drop in revenue for the off-campus housing market. This has the same effect as adding 28% more capacity overnight to off-campus housing. Rent rates will need to decrease and housing communities that are further away from campus or in less-desirable locations will suffer more (the new apartments on Grand River and Red Cedar Renaissance should be okay given their prime locations).
For the potential upsides: If more students graduate and students have a more positive experience living in East Lansing, more may want to stay for graduate school or post-grad employment thus adding to housing demand and adding money to the local economy.
Yeah, seems the motivation was both higher graduation rates and lots more room-and-board money coming in, and as you say, the pandemic was good cover to kind of bury the news. And, yeah, my thought is that this hurts the students apartments further away from the core. But, I also think it kills any massive student housing projects even close to campus like The Hub 2.
I see that I do not know that sophomores could live off-campus. Back in the old days if you were not from the Lansing area you had to live in the dorms or a "Greek House" for the first two years. Does MSU have the housing capacity for this? I have not seen any "dorms" being built just the new housing near Kalamazoo. Are the rooms nicer than before? I remember basically cinderblock walls two beds, two desks, and one window! I never lived in one just visited. I never thought gee, I wished I lived in a dorm, I hope they are offering a better situation today.
Yes, MSU has had the sophomore year policy but stopped enforcing it in the 80's. The dorms do have capacity for this. I think I read in one of the articles about 50% of sophomores already live on capacity (which limits the affect to off-campus housing), and it is possible that MSU sees smaller incoming freshmen classes than previous years, especially in the short term as many students may consider taking a gap year until the pandemic is fully over. It will probably be a long time until we reach 70% vaccination (one measure of "herd immunity") considering there are lots of people that are skeptical of the vaccine or vaccines in general.
Comments
What I see is that MSU had known for a while that increased years living on campus led to higher graduation rates. When I was an RA (Resident Mentor) in the mid-2000's they told us this and wanted us to give our students a good live-on experience so they would come back. It seems that Covid has given them the right cover to make this change as well as financial pressure too.
Off-campus student housing basically had 3-4 years of rent per student (assuming students graduate in 4-5 years, which covers most though some statistics only measure 6-year graduation rates). This change will reduce the number of years students live off-campus to 2-3 years, which would be roughly a 28% drop in revenue for the off-campus housing market. This has the same effect as adding 28% more capacity overnight to off-campus housing. Rent rates will need to decrease and housing communities that are further away from campus or in less-desirable locations will suffer more (the new apartments on Grand River and Red Cedar Renaissance should be okay given their prime locations).
For the potential upsides: If more students graduate and students have a more positive experience living in East Lansing, more may want to stay for graduate school or post-grad employment thus adding to housing demand and adding money to the local economy.