We've been spending a lot of time the last couple of weeks talking about the back to school push.
Colleges, too, are starting up again, and the University of Nevada, Reno finds itself with a dilemma: where will students live when they come back to campus?
More and more returning students are priced out of Reno's housing market, so they're staying on campus.
“I think more and more students are seeing the advantages of living on campus. And I think more and more students are also experiencing the difficulties of the local market here in Northern Nevada,” Jerome Maese, director of residential life at UNR, told KNPR's State of Nevada.
Maese said there has been a spike in students choosing to live on campus but it is still only about 17 percent of the total student body. And despite that spike, he said there isn't a waiting list for campus housing - yet.
“We’ve got a good plan. We’re executing it well. We’re keeping up with demand. It is definitely tight but we get everybody in currently," he said.
One of the main reasons there isn't a lack of space is that several years ago the university changed many of the double resident rooms in the freshman dorms into triple occupancy.
And while it sounds like a tight fit, Maese says the triple capacity rooms are actually the most requested rooms. He said the university can charge less for them and they allow for more socializing among more students.
Some universities around the country have stopped providing housing for students, but instead, have partnered with private companies to provide housing.
Maese said so far UNR has only one of those partnerships and was to build graduate student housing on campus. He said the university was thoughtful in that partnership because its goal is not to make money but to serve students and provide an academic environment.
And currently staying on campus can save students a couple hundred dollars a month, Maese said.
He said the average rent on campus is about $1,000 a month for room and board. An off-campus apartment can cost about $600 a month but that doesn't include food, cleaning, furniture, cooking equipment and utilities.
Maese would like even more students to realize that and choose to live on campus.
“I think when students live together on a university campus [their] retention rates, their academic success rates increase at a higher rate than off-campus students,” he said.
He said students in on-campus housing do better in class and finish their degrees quicker.
Jerome Maese, director of residential life, University of Nevada
