The Social Experience On-Campus or The Privacy of Living Off Campus

1111 Words3 Pages

My best friend, Michael, and I were recently shopping around trying to determine where we were going to live starting in the fall next school year. We both spent this last semester on campus to fulfil Georgia Southern’s first-year requirement and both of us would be quick to agree that it definitely had its pros and cons. Before we started, we sat down and took a look at what on-campus and off-campus housing had to offer using a cost-to-benefit ratio. While living on-campus is great in the fact that you are able to walk to class faster, you are located closer to the meal hall, and you have the ability to go to the library without searching for a parking spot; due to the tolls it takes financially, socially, and personally in regards to schoolwork and grades, living on-campus is an issue that I feel is a huge factor in low grades. Off-campus housing, due to the wide variety to choose from, is capable of providing students with the freedom they need in order to be their own person, the ability to hide away in your room when it’s time to study or visit one of the many amenities provided by the community when they feel like being social, and they provide all of this at a mere fraction of the cost of on-campus housing even when factoring in utilities, food, and gas.
The repercussions from a financial standpoint are by far the easiest to determine. Georgia Southern University’s on-campus housing costs typically range anywhere from roughly $2,300-3,900 per semester. These prices are all-inclusive in that the electricity, water, garbage, and even cable and internet are all included in the price as well as being fully-furnished upon move-in; however, when you take into account that on-campus leases are only 4 months long, you start to r...

... middle of paper ...

...5 July 2008. George Fox. 22 April 2014 .
Georgia Southern University. "University Housing Rates." 2014. Georgia Southern. 22 April 2014 .
Mattioli, Dana. "The Pros and Cons of Living Off Campus." The Wall Street Journal (2007).
Naidus, Alex. "21 Lessons You Learn Living Off Campus." Buzzfeed, 11 August 2013.
Office of Research and Evaluation. The Impact of Living On or Off Campus in the Freshman Year. Irvine: University of California, 2007.
Seow-Eng Ong, Milena Petrova, and Andrew C. Spieler. "Demand for University Student Housing: An Emperical Analysis." Journal of Housing Research 22.2 (2013): 141-164.
Vallient, Paul M. and Patricia Scanlan. "Personality, Living Arrangements, and Alcohol Use by First Year University Students." Social Behavior and Personality: An International Journal (1996): 151-156.

More about The Social Experience On-Campus or The Privacy of Living Off Campus

Open Document