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Solution for Lack of Student Housing

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Over the last few years, Texas State University-San Marcos has seen a significant increase in the number students applying and being admitted to the university. According to Hendricks (2010), from the fall of 2009 to the fall of 2010, the campus saw a 5.9% increase in the number of students attending the university. In the fall of 2010, the campus reached a new record enrollment of 32,586 students; Out of those, 3,930 were incoming freshman. A vast majority of freshmen and sophomores experience their first two years of college life spread out among the university grounds in dormitories or apartments. In order for many incoming students to attend, they must live on-campus unless they meet the requirements as stated by university policy. …show more content…

The athletics department reserves a specific amount of spaces per year for their athletes to live on-campus because of being under contract. Effects of this amount of space is continuing to kick out upperclassmen that want and need the benefits of on-campus living such as learning communities, residential colleges, etc. Texas State is growing fast and now experiencing limited space and money to expand on-campus living in order to accommodate incoming and returning students and adhere its mission for education policy. The negative effects of this problem are that a percentage of freshmen, as well as a large percentage of upperclassmen, are now not receiving the opportunities that living on-campus provides because there is no structure off-campus. For instance, SLAC is not mandatory, and neither are tutors. By living in the dorms, or on-campus apartments and suites, students have services readily available to them like residential colleges and learning communities. Residential colleges are “living-learning communities” where students live and go to class with people in the same major. In each room are students who have the same schedules. In each residential college, tutors are available, as well as study groups, and seeing as everyone in that building are taking the same tests at the same time this provides a strong academic community. Learning communities are specifically for a certain dorm or apartment

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