More Students and Less Capital Funding Push Innovative Housing
Even as tuition skyrockets at many U.S. universities, enrollment is keeping pace, creating larger student bodies that are less inclined to accept cramped and aging dormitories. To accommodate and lure students with top-quality housing stock built faster and more economically, schools are embracing private developers as partners. Public universities facing cuts in state funding already are on the bandwagon, and private schools also are seeing more benefit in the privatization approach.
California is a privatized housing hot spot. In the next five years alone, California colleges expect another 800,000 students. At the University of California campus in Irvine, American Campus Communities Inc., an Austin, Texas-based real estate investment trust, is developing Vista del Campo, a $73-million, 1,564-bed project. Set for completion next year, it follows a 1,488-bed first phase completed in 2004.