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Outsourcing Student Housing in American Community Colleges: Problems and Prospects

Today's community colleges are experiencing tremendous growth at a time when higher education is experiencing little success in the fierce battle for public funding. Administrators believe that providing housing on college campuses increases enrollment and improves access, but they are having difficulty meeting students' demands for both quantity and quality of student housing. Community college leaders are challenged to find alternative ways to achieve new housing on their campuses. With resources already stretched, institutions sometimes struggle to find funding sources for these projects due to their impact on institutional debt service. Many colleges are turning to private foundations and corporations for their financing, construction, and management needs. This practice has increased dramatically over the past 10 years. To date, there have been over 214 privatized, nonrecourse-financed student housing projects on college and university campuses in the United States, with at least 11 occurring on community college campuses. Due to increasing demand, privatization of student housing is likely to increase. Very little literature exists addressing the evolution, problems, and potential of this practice, but administrators may need to have an understanding of the process as it becomes more commonplace on community college campuses. Interviews with community college administrators, student housing administrators, and representatives of private development and management corporations and a literature review were conducted. The results are synthesized into a history and overview of outsourcing student housing construction and management in the United States, including problems with outsourcing, strategies to avoid failure, future possibilities, and recommendations for future research.