Talking Stick - July/August 2008 - (Page 26)

Business apartments. Amenity upgrades, as well as being sensitive to the changing needs of our students, drive how we configure and deliver housing options.” More often than not pricing is based on other factors such as paying down the department’s debt, cost of projects, and actual costs to meet budget. As housing departments continue to strive to meet students’ desires, they are putting more money into their campus housing and are then often pressed to increase the cost of living on campus. As Schmidt explains, more amenities can translate into higher costs for students: “Until we built new residence halls that opened in 2003, our rates were all the same. The new halls are air conditioned and have four bedrooms and two bathrooms and are shared by four students. As a result, students living in these rooms pay a 30 percent surcharge of the room rate. We have one other residence hall that is designed for two people in a one-bedroom suite (our other 15 halls house four students in one- or two-bedroom suites), and they are charged an additional 20 percent of the room charge for the ‘luxury’ of only having one roommate.” Differences in costs and amenities could create a division between the haves and the have-nots, but institutions can use several strategies to help students avoid feeling segregated financially because of which residence hall they chose to live in. One strategy, utilized by Central Michigan, is to purposely place residential colleges and theme halls in the older, less expensive residence halls. Another strategy is to give students an opportunity to be heard and involve them in the budget meetings when determining the price increase for each year. Tom Kane, dean of housing and residential education director at the University of South Florida, Tampa, outlines a strategy that worked for them: “We have our students determine how we set our rates. This year instead of doing a flat 7 percent increase they proposed an 8 percent increase for our most popular halls and 4 percent for our least popular. It still netted us the same bottom line but the students had their input heard.” Keeping an institution’s housing fees competitive and creating equal opportunity across campus is no easy task, but using a tiered pricing structure can make it easier. By listening to students’ feedback and benchmarking against similar markets, institutions can turn their response to the “I wants” into something positive like “Yes, we can offer you that.” ts Ann Marie Klotz is the assistant director of programming and training at DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois. http://www.perrrydean.com http://www.perrrydean.com

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Talking Stick - July/August 2008 Contents Online Now Vision Just In Your ACUHO-I Transitions Res Life Facilities Business Calendar When Politics Come to Your Town Support System Conversations First Takes Reporting Out New Members Snapshot

Talking Stick - July/August 2008

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