When the University informed Residence Life Advisors (RAs) that they would have to temporarily share a room with freshmen, it was virtually clear that the University was struggling with a housing shortage. Burdening RAs with unexpected roommates is just one of the measures the University has taken to address the situation created by several months of increasing uncertainty.
“It’s a complicated story how we got to this point,” said Chris Axtman-Barker, assistant director of communications and marketing for University Housing. “Many students returned from last year, but we still had more than enough open spots for freshmen until things started to get a little unpredictable.”
Although more students than usual are returning to the dorms in their sophomore or higher semesters, Axtman-Barker explained that most will have made that decision in fall 2023, months before freshmen begin selecting their dorms.
“Our return number is complete before we have reliable, meaningful information about what the next class will look like,” Axtman-Barker said.
Complications began to emerge in March, when in normal years the university offers financial aid to students. This year, however, March passed without prospective students receiving any information about financial aid options.
“One issue all universities have faced has been the federal government’s delay in implementing the new FAFSA process,” Allison Vance, director of strategic communications and marketing, said via email. “This has pushed back the entire timeline for admissions, financial aid and housing.”
Normally, the FAFSA form, which determines a student’s eligibility for financial aid, is available on October 1. This year, it was not available until January 1.
Not only were there delays in the availability of the FAFSA application, but universities were also delayed in receiving accurate information from the form.
“The Department of Education had a number of data errors in student financial aid on FAFSA scores,” Axtman-Barker said. “These had to be corrected and then resubmitted. This delayed the ability of financial aid offices across the country, including our own at the University of Illinois, to award financial aid to students.”
As a result, offers of financial assistance were not extended until April 19, over a month later than usual. This pushed the acceptance deadline from May 1 to May 15, which in turn pushed the deadline to apply for priority housing from May 15 to May 22.
According to Michelle Trame, director of student financial aid, the university offered financial aid before many other colleges despite the delayed process. Being one of the first to do so may actually have contributed to the next problem: predicting the size of the incoming class.
The number of students who accept their offers and attend university is called the exploitation rate and is becoming increasingly difficult to calculate this year.
“It’s difficult to say exactly how our timeline for providing financial aid to our students affected our yield, but it may be related to our ability to send out notifications of aid earlier than other schools,” Trame said of Vance’s correspondence. “It’s possible that students made their decisions based on the information available to them at the time and accepted our admission offers rather than waiting for a financial aid offer from another school.”
The FAFSA wasn’t the only factor that threw off the enrollment forecast. Vance explained that several other factors went against trends of recent years and further contributed to an underestimation of the size of the new classes.
One was an unusually high number of international students accepting their admission offers. Another was the low number of what the university calls the “summer melt,” the number of students who accept their admission but later change their minds.
“Summer snowmelt is a factor we always consider when planning for the new vintage, and in past years summer snowmelt has been much higher,” Vance said.
All of these factors came to a head just days before students could begin selecting rooms, when the university realized it had significantly underestimated its estimate.
“There’s this unpredictability that’s looming, and university staff have very little time to react,” Axtam-Barker said. “And I say that to provide context for what we did next. We tried to really maximize space in our own capacity to get cancellations done as quickly as possible.”
Since a simple request did not produce the desired results, the university began offering financial incentives in the form of a $2,000 credit to the student’s account and 100 free meals to those willing to terminate their housing contract.
The $2,000 amount was set, the university believes, as a mark at which students would be able to pay a security deposit and up to two months’ rent for a middle-class apartment in the area.
“I quit mainly because of the perks and because the housing is generally cheaper than university and there is a meal plan,” Ella Trevillian, a sophomore in LAS, said via email.
Trevillian was originally scheduled to return to FAR Trelease for another year before deciding to accept the university’s offer and terminate her lease. Although the move saved some money, Trevillian wasn’t thrilled with every part of the deal.
“I don’t think the $2,000 is fair because I didn’t decide where it went,” Trevillian said. “It wasn’t an extra $2,000 for things I could do, but more like $2,000 less for tuition.”
Axtman-Barker acknowledged that the university’s housing department could not give money directly to students, so crediting student accounts was the next best solution. Despite this solution, there were still some limitations.
“Unfortunately, I already had loans and things like that, so I didn’t even get the full $2,000,” Trevillian said. Although the financial aspect of the deal wasn’t enough for Trevillian, she was happy with the living expenses.
“I think the meal plans are a pretty good deal though,” Trevillian added. “I’ll be living far from campus, but it will give me easier access to food during class breaks.”
Trevillian’s new distance from campus is another unintended side effect of the situation. The most desirable apartments on campus are often taken many months before the academic year begins. Now that fall semester is upon us, Trevillian has his hands full trying to find a new place to live in time.
“It was difficult to find housing so close to the start of the semester,” Trevillian said. “There’s never really an ideal apartment on campus, but most acceptable apartments were unavailable.”
New roommates in a new place far from school isn’t exactly a dream scenario, but Trevillian doesn’t seem too discouraged. “It’s far from perfect, but with a tight schedule, it’ll be fine,” Trevillian concluded.
The university’s cancellation campaign has been somewhat successful. So far, over 250 students have canceled and all received the $2,000 credit and free meals. Still, the cancellations were not enough, and more drastic measures were needed to increase housing capacity.
The university informed RAs on July 26 that some advisors would have a temporary freshman roommate for the upcoming academic year.
“Unfortunately, one of the most obvious answers is that the RAs have to have a roommate because then we can create a lot more space and we’re in a situation where we’re way under the space we need to accommodate the new cohort,” Axtman-Barker said. “And we have to accommodate everyone who has to live with us.”
In most cases, freshmen are required to live in university housing. The 2021 and 2023 freshmen both set records for the university’s largest freshman class, and all signs point to that being the case in 2024. Trevillian admitted that FAR was already struggling with overcrowding last year, so with the freshman class looking even larger than ever, the question of a more permanent solution to provide more student housing is becoming increasingly important.
“We have a plan to build new buildings, and that plan existed before the housing shortage occurred this summer,” Axtman-Barker said.
However, these plans will be years away as the university still needs to determine the number of rooms to be added, the final location and enough money to support the project.
While there are long-term plans, current students must make do with measures that were unheard of during Axtman-Barker’s tenure – and which he believes are far from ideal.
“We know that in some cases, people weren’t expecting to get this, particularly when it comes to our RAs, and we’ve taken up their room, and we’re really sorry that this is happening,” Axtman-Barker said. “We wouldn’t do it if we didn’t think it was absolutely necessary, but we’re still really sorry that it’s happening.”
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