The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 39, No. 2 & Volume 40, No. 1 - 25

Factors in Students’ Housing Choices

has investigated motivating factors behind students’ campus housing choices. Other studies
focused on students’ satisfaction with their residence hall in general (e.g., Alkandari, 2007;
Amole, 2008, Balogh et al., 2009; Thomsen
& Eikemo, 2010) or predictors of retention,
but not predictors of building selection. Thus,
this study is the first to provide student affairs
administrators with evidence regarding these
factors, ones that they list in their brochures
about on-campus student housing. Specific
characteristics of residence halls, such as size
and type of rooms offered, age of building,
recreational activities available, proximity to
central campus, living-learning communities,
cost, and friends and roommates are important
factors in students’ choices of a residence hall.
The three most important considerations identified by first-year students for whom housing
was important in their decision to come to the
university in 2009 and 2010 were (1) size/type
of room, (2) age of building, and (3) amenities.

than were those who did not. Given the choice
of moving to another residence hall, first-year
students who lived in older, traditional, doubleoccupancy bedrooms were more likely to want
to move than were the other students, and they
wanted to move to new, suite-style, private
bedroom buildings.

Whether housing was important in students’ decision to attend the university also
played a role in the characteristics that were
important in their housing choices and the
characteristics of the residence hall in which
they actually lived. First-year students for
whom housing was important in their decision to attend the university, compared to
first-year students for whom housing was not
important, were more likely to choose size/
type of room and age of building as important
characteristics of their housing choices, and
they were more likely to live in new, suite-style
buildings with private bedrooms. Further, firstyear students who lived in new buildings with
suites and private bedrooms were more likely
to want to stay on campus the following year

c ampus life, which in turn

These results related to size and/or type of
room are consistent with recent thinking about
housing, as many construction and renovation projects have tended to focus on suite- or
apartment-style buildings (Balogh et al., 2005).
However, research has also shown that there is
actually less cohesion among the students—

. . . a student’s sense of
community has been shown
to predict satisfaction with
predicts retention and
g raduation.

less community—in suite- or apartment-style
residence halls (Berger & Milem, 1999; Foubert
et al., 1998) where residents have private bedrooms, and so building residence halls in which
students are gently forced to interact with
their fellow students by way of sharing bedrooms may facilitate the sense of community
that some institutions would like to encourage
(“Some—but Not All,” 2005). This is an important consideration because a student’s sense of
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The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 39, No. 2 & Volume 40, No. 1

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 39, No. 2 & Volume 40, No. 1