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| ASU on-campus
housing deficit to reach nearly 1,000 in next 8 years |
by Jessica Hines
Associate Editor
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 Editor’s
note: This story is the first of two. The concluding story
will be in the July 17 publication of the The Appalachian.
Increasing enrollment within the University
of North Carolina system creates a demand for on-campus housing,
and pushes Appalachian State University into a shortage of
at least 800 spaces by 2012, according to projections from
the Student Development Committee of the Board of Trustees.
Appalachian undergraduate enrollment is expected to peak at
13,800 in the next eight years, and current residence halls
house 35.4 percent of the entire undergraduate population.
The number of students living on campus continues to drop,
Vice Chancellor for Student Development Gregory S. Blimling
said June 6 at the BOT meeting.
“We don’t have any increases in the number of spaces
available on campus, and the result is we’ll be going
down to about 34 percent of the student body living on campus,
as opposed to a few years ago with just over 40 percent,”
Blimling said.
With the residence hall renovation projects, more housing
will be lost before it is gained.
Plans to “bring down” two residence halls per year
were abandoned, and with the plan went the seven to eight-year
window for renovations, he said.
With current plans, one residence hall will be renovated per
year, and it will take approximately 15 years to renovate
all on-campus housing.
“To put a bed online today is significantly higher than
looking at the cost of maintaining our current residence halls,”
Blimling said.
“If we started today and the decision was made to do
something, we need to meet at least some of this deficit situation
on campus, it would take us two years to deliver a residence
hall of approximately enough students” he said. “Even
if we fast-tracked it in two years our demand is going to
be up in the neighborhood of another 150 students above what
we currently have, so we’d still have a deficit.”
In 1999, 40.1 percent of students lived on campus, and in
2012 it is projected that 34.5 percent will live on campus,
according to the committee report. Instead of providing housing
to meet the on-campus demand, projections look to maintain
40 percent of undergraduates in residence halls.
“If we look at it from the standpoint of 40 percent,
and try to maintain what we once had, we have a deficit now
of 600 and that would rise to nearly 800 students by 2012,”
Blimling said.
“We recognize that there’s going to be growth, not
only at our institution but at the entire UNC system,”
he said. “The desire of the institution is not to grow,
but the demands are being placed upon this institution and
all the institutions in North Carolina as a result and the
need of the citizens of North Carolina who dictate that we
must increase in size.
“We have a problem here. We’re saying that we have
a problem, we’re recognizing that problem, and we need
to begin to think about ways that we can meet this problem
for our student body.” |
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