Recently we completed a study on the availability of online off-campus housing information provided by the colleges and universities that make up the Minnesota Post-Secondary school system. As we all know, off-campus housing is a vital component to a college education, not only for students who do not wish to live on campus, but for smaller schools that do not have on-campus housing options available.
After a few hours of online homework scouring the websites of the 100 Colleges, Universities and private schools in Minnesota…here’s what we found:
With almost endless housing information scattered across the web, such a small percentage of dynamic, search-able services provided by Colleges and Universities would be seem understandable. However, after reflecting back on my own personal experience in college, I recall having no clue where to start looking for off-campus housing. For that matter, up until my sophomore year, I hadn’t even thought about housing, let alone search for it. It was always just there.
So when it came time to take my college experience off campus, my fellow students and I went to first place we thought of for help, our school. Fortunately for me, I happened to attend one of the two schools in Minnesota (University of MN – Duluth), that actually maintained a list that I could search (Go UMD!).
So if most of us begin our apartment search when moving from on-campus resident life to off-campus, wouldn’t it seem natural that more schools would provide such resources and guidance for their students?