The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 43, No. 1 - 21

Family Income, Campus Residency, and Student Retention

point improvement, and those in the top see a
4.2 percentage point increase.

DISCUSSION
To understand whether low-income students
may be disadvantaged by residential settings,
this study explores variation in the effects of
campus residency across family income. The
average effects suggest that living on campus
improves student persistence, consistent with
results from previous ﬁndings using propensity score matching and the ELS (Schudde,
2011). However, by disaggregating the effects
across the income distribution, I demonstrate
patterns of unequal returns to campus residency across family income.
The trends suggested by the data-in
which students from the lowest income quartile (earning below $38,511) see null effects of
living on campus, while their more afﬂuent
peers experience enhanced retention-align
with theory that students from less afﬂuent
backgrounds struggle to reap the rewards associated with spending time on campus. The
results may seem counterintuitive when considering the long history of research touting
the beneﬁts of living on campus. However,
living on campus may result in feelings of isolation and incongruence if interactions with
peers associated with campus residency signal
a clash between the students' cultural expectations and the norms of the college (Armstrong
& Hamilton, 2013; Stuber, 2011). Alternatively,
differential effects could reﬂect ﬁnancial constraints faced by low-income students that
make them unable to engage as frequently
with their peers. Perhaps, due to having less
money, they cannot join in on a trip to the
movies or out to dinner. The lack of variation

in effects across educational background may
indicate that ﬁnancial constraints, rather than
just cultural mismatch, contribute to the low
impact of campus residency among low-income students.
Still, with appropriate interventions, residential life programming could be a ﬁrst line
of defense to improve the persistence of socioeconomically disadvantaged students. Indeed,
Resident Assistants are often the ﬁrst people
that campus residents turn to for help with
problems related to the college experience
(Johnson, Kang, & Thompson, 2011). Efforts
to create a more inclusive institutional culture
and to offer opportunities for students from
diverse backgrounds to participate in campus
life can be carefully designed and pursued.

Implications for Practice and Future
Areas of Inquiry
At colleges with campus housing facilities,
much of students' orientation to college life
occurs within residence halls (Armstrong &
Hamilton, 2013). As students' ﬁrst taste of
college life, these settings offer an important
opportunity to foster an inclusive campus
climate. At the same time, setting the tone
of an inclusive climate in an environment in
which students actually display their wealth
(through room décor, attire, consumption of
pop culture, etc.) is particularly challenging.
Low-income students, faced with ﬂagrant
spending by their peers (either through room
décor or paying for food/social outings), may
be acutely aware of their ﬁnancial constraints
and feel unable to ﬁt in.
One simple intervention might be to offer
all students a variety of extracurricular experiences that are free-or low cost-and appeal

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The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 43, No. 1

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