Community Colleges Consider Apartment-Style Student Housing

BARNSTABLE, MA-Cramped by a lack of affordable student housing, several state community colleges are planning to build on-campus apartments. The move could change a long-held concept of the institutions as commuter schools.

Michael Gross, director of college communications at Cape Cod Community College, tells GlobeSt.com that the school has already conducted a feasibility study on the issue. It found that the school could use more than 300 units to house students who often must travel from as far away as Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket to attend classes.

"This is something we've been looking at pretty aggressively for a year or more," says Gross, noting that a lack of cheap housing on Cape Cod, particularly during the summer months when apartments are often rented by tourists, prompted the college to consider building its own student apartments on the 100-acre campus. Gross says the school's location as the only college within 50 miles combined with the high cost of rental housing in the area, has created a strong need for affordable housing.

"We're not talking of building the typical dorm." The school envisions building garden-style apartments on campus where students, many of them older with families, can live while continuing their studies. The housing crunch is so severe on Cape Cod, he says, some students have been forced to live in their cars during the summer when rental rates spike. Although no plans have yet been finalized and no costs determined, Gross says the school could become the first community college in the state to build student housing now that president Kathleen Schatzberg has issued a directive to school administrators to "put some hard proposals together."

Now, other colleges may follow suit. Greenfield Community College also is looking into building housing for single parents with an on-site day care facility and Mt. Wachusett Community College is considering a proposal to build a mix of residences for single parents and the general student population on its Gardner campus at an estimated cost of $13 million.

No community college in Massachusetts currently has student housing on campus although Fitchburg State College and Wachusett Community College currently has an agreement that allows some community college students to live on the Fitchburg campus while attending classes at Wachusett. A spokeswoman for the American Association of Community Colleges says the need for student housing has become acute as more students look to community colleges for a four-year education.