The school will welcome its largest incoming freshman class on record this fall, and some dorms at the college are under construction, forcing the housing shortage.
University leaders are expecting more than 7,800 students total will want to live on-campus next year, but the campus only has capacity to house 7,520, Miami spokeswoman Claire Wagner said.
The university has enough room to house all freshman students but not all of the sophomores, she said.
“You do estimates, you think you’re being conservative and, as we found, we’ve had stronger classes in the two previous years and the classes were larger than what was initially anticipated,” said David Creamer, the school’s finance director. “It’s caused us to have to make some adjustments.”
Upperclassmen received an email, obtained by this news outlet, last Friday that asked interested students to sign up by Thursday for living in apartment complexes in lieu of dorms.
Wagner said those who decide to live in the apartment complexes, one of which sits about a mile off campus and the other which is less than a half-mile from the college, will still pay the university’s housing rates and be subject to its rules.
The university is paying the Miami Preserve in Oxford $525 monthly to rent out 140 beds from August to May and will pay Hawk’s Landing $518 monthly for 140 beds during the same time. That totals up to roughly $5,200 for the year.
The students, however, will pay the university the standard on-campus housing rate of $3,150 per semester, or $6,300 yearly, to live in those apartments.
Wagner said the cost is driven up because the university will also provide a total of 10 resident advisers, one residence hall director and custodians for the residents who are placed in the apartments through the university.
Miami’s policies require on-campus students to purchase meal plans; and the 280 students who choose to live off-campus will have to do so, too, according to the university’s letter.
Meal plans start at $2,425 per semester, according to Miami’s website, but the university is offering an $800 discount to students who must live in the apartment complexes.
The move isn’t unusual.
University of Cincinnati, which only has on-campus living requirements for freshmen students, has also contracted with private housing complexes in recent years.
The situation is similar: UC has enrolled record-breaking classes in recent years and some dorms are under construction and unusable. Students who go through the university-contracted housing also pay the same rate as their peers who are living in dorms and must secure a meal plan.
College requirements often allow universities to have a “monopoly” on the student housing, said Richard Vedder an economics professor at Ohio University who also runs Washington, D.C.-think tank, the Center for College Affordability and Productivity.
“They rip the students off,” Vedder said of universities. “They ought to get out of the housing business. They’re in the education business, not the food and lodging business.”
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