The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 44, No. 2 - 56

Jessica Wode

the plans of on-campus students for the next
year's housing or to compare on-campus and
off-campus residents directly, in this investigation I took both approaches and found similar
patterns in what the two groups considered
important in choosing their housing.
The findings add complexity to the traditional narrative that whether students continue
to live in campus housing or move off campus
is primarily a matter of what they can afford.
To be sure, rating the cost of housing as important was the top predictor of which students
planned to move off campus the following year,
and it was also rated by off-campus students as
a top factor in their choice of housing that year
far more often than it was by on-campus students. The story does not end there, however;
it is clear that, as previous researchers have
found, there are a number of other factors that
may be at play when a student chooses to move
off campus.
Prior studies have identified the desire
for privacy as a factor more important to students living or planning to move off campus
(Cleave, 1996; Sickler & Roskos, 2013; Twale
& Damron, 1992). The current investigation
found evidence to support this; students planning to move off campus were more likely to
say that having a single room was important to
them, and students already living off campus
rated having a single room as more important
to their choice of housing that year than did
students living on campus. While placing importance on having a single room was not a
significant predictor variable for determining
which students planned to move off campus,
rating a private bathroom as important was
significant, replicating the findings of Li et al.
(2005).
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These findings about single rooms and
private bathrooms should not be taken as fundamental answers for every university about
why students move off campus; instead, they
draw attention to key features of the housing
inventory at the university where the study
was conducted. While it is challenging but
not impossible to get a single room in campus
housing, very few housing options on this
campus offer a private bathroom. This study's
results provide support for the idea that students for whom privacy in housing is highly
important are more likely to move off campus,
but the specific housing features students are
seeking by moving off campus will likely vary
by what is and is not available on campus at
their school.
While the findings of this and previous
studies suggest that more students might be
retained in campus housing if they had more
opportunities to live in single rooms with
private bathrooms, Sickler and Roskos (2013)
warn that housing administrators should not
be too quick to move in this direction with new
hall construction or renovation. The traditional residence hall design of shared rooms and
community bathrooms was created to foster
a sense of community among residents, and
disrupting this could have unintended consequences on student integration and even
institutional retention. They suggest keeping
first-year students in more traditional community living situations, while providing more
options for older students to have privacy in
their residence.
Closely related to the concept of privacy is
that of independence, another factor identified by previous scholars as more important
to those living or moving off campus (Popelka,

T h e J o u r n a l o f C o l l e g e a n d U n i v e r s i t y St u d e n t H o u s i n g
The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 44, No. 2

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