Scott: I’m doing a story for University Business Magazine, which is a relatively new magazine, they’ve been around for about, I think, three or four years now, based out of New York City. And this is a story on trends in student housing. And various people I’ve posed that introduction to have asked, well, which trends, and to which my answer is basically all of them. It’s going to be a fairly long feature, 3,000 to 3500 words, plus illustrations, plus whatever photos we can get of interesting … student housing projects out there. But basically the … the door has been left very wide open for me as a write to just follow whatever trends are relevant. Now, obviously, some trends like rising enrollment, everyone knows about, some trends like privatization, um, have been around for a little while. Obviously in those sorts of things, we want to look not simply at the trend and talk about it in a very general way, but to look at some of the real nitty-gritty kind of ways these are affecting student housing, how privatization, for example, is evolving as both the developers and the institutions get more knowledgeable about this and … and work more effectively in partnership with each other. Um, but basically, looking at financing, privatization, technology, amenities, campus environment, the living-learning trend. Um, design issues, design and architectural issues. Basically anything that affects campus housing, beyond, of course, issues like, you know, residence counseling or those sorts of things.

 

Terry: Sure.

 

Scott: So, Norb—

 

Norb: Yeah.

 

Scott: —since you were first on the line, I will throw this over—

 

Kevin: You know what might be helpful if we have a minute—

 

Scott: Hm?

 

Kevin: —is, well, it might be helpful, is if, if Norb and I just talk like a minute each about our background.

 

Scott: Okay.

 

Kevin: Because I think it might be very different.

 

Scott: Okay.

 

Kevin: And I’ve been—why don’t I start.

 

Scott: Go ahead.

 

Kevin: My name’s Kevin Duffy. I’ve been at Boston College for 33 years, last 24 years as Vice President for Student Affairs, before that Director of Housing. In those 33—I went, I’m not teaching on the Higher Ed faculty. But in those 33 years, we’ve gone from a largely commuter, local college, to a major residential university, and have gone from 1700 beds to 6,900, and we currently have another 600 on the drawing boards. But all of my experience is limited to Boston College in terms of work, but I have been very active in a (inaudible) and the other professional organizations and student affairs. What I’m not familiar with other than having visited a number of them, is what’s happening in state university systems and, and I suspect that—Norb, are you at the Central Office in University of Florida?

 

Norb: Yes.

 

Kevin: Yes, so you would have a very different experience and I’d be kind of interested in that.

 

Norb: Yeah, yeah. And we’re in the middle of a lot of change here, so I’ll be happy to talk to a little bit about that as well.

 

Kevin: Okay.

 

Norb: And I’m Norb Dunkel, currently the Director of Housing at the University of Florida. I’ve been here for 13 years in a couple of different divisions with the Division of Housing, and in those 13 years we are now in our fourth major residential construction project. Previously having worked at South Dakota State, and the University of Northern Iowa, and Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. Um, the last four or five years is my interest in facilities in construction and renovation has peaked, and I had the opportunity to co-edit a monograph no construction and renovation design and cost with Jim Grim, and I have just submitted a proposal that’s been accepted by ACUHO [?] to co-edit a book on campus housing construction. And that book will be an A to Z reference for anyone from housing officers, student affairs officers, to, developers and architects and so forth on what is going on in campus housing construction from concept to the design teams to delivery methods, finance packages, and so forth. So that should probably be prepared for the fall of 2002.

 

Kevin: Okay.

 

Norb: My background is both administrative and residence life.

 

Scott: Okay.

 

Norb: And have been in the Directors position for the past year.

 

Scott: Very good.

 

Kevin: Good.

 

Scott: I think Terry, I think you probably, probably chose pretty well to get a couple people with fairly different backgrounds.

 

Terry: And good voices too [laughter].

 

Scott: That too, that always helps. So Kevin, since you were, you were kind of the first to speak, let me, let me turn it back over to you. Um, if I say what’s happening in student housing, particularly the last two, three, four years, either new or emerging trends or evolution of older trends, what are the first kinds of things that come to mind for you?

 

Kevin: I think renovation or retrofitting the traditional dormitories, and that’s what they were. They were built in the ‘50s and ‘60s.

 

Scott: Um-hum.

 

Kevin: Which are now 30 to 40 years old, and many campuses are spending a great deal of funds, totally upgrading those. Also as the cost of housing increases, as does tuition and everything else, your customer is demanding more than just a corridor-centered dormitory with gang showers and gang baths, which are 30 years old. I think secondly, the whole—somebody mentioned earlier—the whole impact of technology, the whole concept of a port at every [inaudible], where you have—in our case, it’s a triple jack in that you have telephone, you have Internet, you have television. And I think most schools now, if they don’t have it, are trying to get that because our students expect it.

 

Scott: Yeah.

 

Kevin: They expect to be able to sit down with their computer in their room and access the world, as well as their friends back home. And I think part of that also is voice mail. Most schools now assign every full-time undergraduate a voice mail address, which stays with them in our case for five years -- four years, and then one year after they graduate whether they’re living in our residence halls or living off campus. I think the whole idea of residence halls becoming just bed—they’re not just bedrooms anymore. Students expect suites, they expect living rooms. They’ll tolerate the older residence halls, at least this is my experience, for freshman year, and maybe their sophomore year. But if you don’t much more than a traditional residence hall, then they tend to move off campus on you if they possibly can. So the residence hall units which students learn in clusters of four and six and eight, become their home. Whereas previously it was largely their bedroom, and they would, you know, tend to spend less time there.

 

Scott: Okay.

 

Kevin: Those are the few ideas. I don’t want to dominate it.

 

Terry: Norb, would you like to put in your thoughts on that?

 

Norb: Yeah. Um, a couple of … some similar thoughts as well. Clearly in state institutions a lot of the original bonds that were taken out thirty years ago on building construction are running their life. And those institutions that are in that situation that have a good reserve account, are now in a wonderful position to go back out for additional money, or use reserve account money, to begin to renovate that older stock. Then there are the institutions that not only have those bonds running their course of life, but have built as we have, over the last 10 or 15 years with new bond money. And the situation that those institutions find themselves in is that as we take on that extra debt, we’re getting close to debt capacity, and yet we still have a strong need to renovate the older stock while walking in the same step, we’re attempting to built a massive inventory of new stock. That’s difficult, and that’s a bit of a frustration for a lot of housing directors. With regard to construction, clearly in the state of Florida, for instance, we recently had a Florida Housing Officers meeting and I entertained a few questions and in the next ten years, the State of Florida will see an increase of 11 to 13,000 new residence all beds. All of those will be suite or apartment style, and—

 

Scott: Now we’re talking about the state of the state university system?

 

Norb: This is both public and private institutions in the State of Florida.

 

Scott: This is in the whole state. And what was the figure again? How many beds?

 

Norb: Eleven to thirteen thousand additional beds, both suite and apartment style. Now I’m aware the are still campuses around the country that are building double-loaded corridors with semi-communal bath and in a lot of those cases, the housing operation, you know, isn’t a player in the design of those facilities. Which is unfortunate, because clearly, you know, housing officers and student affairs officers see the value and suite and apartment type construction. Clearly most of us are going to suite and apartment type construction. The second area is the technology that was mentioned, the fact that a lot of campuses are pulling multi-mode fiber, the voice video and data, and they’re even going a step farther and looking into voice over IP or video over IP, where the student is assigned a phone number and they’ll carry that phone number with them as the address during their term at the institution.

 

Terry: Um-hum.

 

Norb: So certainly technology, which is a very expensive item, is something in the last four or five years that a lot of institutions have looked to, place a, lot of money. Third is a lot of institutions—and Carolyn Palmer has run a pretty good study that she’s going to publish this fall—are moving back, if you will, to what some of us refer to as residentially-based academic communities, where we’re pulling the academic community into the residential setting. And we do that along a continuum, from living-learning centers as the last academically stringent to the residential college, which is the most academically stringent.

 

Terry: Okay.

 

Norb: And perhaps some of the best programs are conceiving of one of these communities, and sitting down and really putting the program together. And then they’re going out and getting their architects or their contractor to design and build these places. A lot of places have, you know, looked back at their older stock and said, “Well, let’s take this whole building and plug this program in. In my opinion it should go the other way around. If you have the choice to build new … look at the program first and then design and build that facility around the program. And then the last item that I would mention is that you asked us to look at the last four or five years. The housing operations around the country are facing a bit of a dilemma in the staffing. There are still the same number of graduates coming out of preparation programs. But those graduates that are coming out of preparation programs are less likely to look to housing positions today as they have five or ten years ago. Used to be 80 percent of all student affairs folks came out of a housing operation. That was the basic place that you basically started. Now we’re seeing those graduates go on to student activities, academic advising, in Dean’s offices and so forth, because they don’t like the live-in concept. So as we as housing officers look forward, you know, we not only have to react to some of what’s going on, but we certainly need to do a much better job at planning on how our staff will look in five or ten years. Because I think they’ll look quite different than they are today.

 

Terry: Okay.

 

Kevin: I think Norb is on the mark on that last—we’re having more difficult now recruiting and then keeping resident assistants and hall directors than we have at any time in the last 20 years. Not wanting to live in is one second I think in increased level of affluence, at least in private higher education where students don’t need the job for the money that’s involved in it. I think also increased competition from other areas, as Norb mentioned. That … and salary has a lot to do with it. Our residence hall director positions tend to be on the low end of the scale in student affairs, and somebody can get an Assistant Director of Student Activities job for maybe $10,000 more a year and now have all of the [inaudible] and responsibility.

 

Terry: Um-hum.

 

Kevin: So I think that’s a great point, and we are going to have very different residence staffs ten years from now.

 

Norb: Yeah.

 

Terry: Okay.

 

Kevin: One interesting thing that’s going on, and I don’t know all the details, but the University of Notre Dame prided itself on busy, building traditional residence halls up until the last couple of years, and what they encouraged the student to do is once you came as a freshman is to stay in the same residence hall for all four years at Notre Dame. And so what would happen is in that residence hall, you’d have a mixture of freshmans, sophomores, juniors and seniors. But in recent years, I was talking to one of their people, in recent years, the seniors have been moving off-campus. They didn’t want the traditional residence hall. So my understanding is, is that now Notre Dame, for its next set of residence hall, is looking at apartments to get the seniors back on campus. But their house model of having all four years maintained, you know, stay in the same residence hall, you could move if you wanted to, but you aren’t encouraged to. And as I understand it, there was very little physical advantage because they were all traditional residence halls that, they’re keeping all of that, but now their new buildings are going to be apartment style.

 

Norb: And I think we, we certainly see that on several campuses, you know, where they by choice will keep some of the traditional housing, and there are still a lot of merits to double loaded quarters, and students will even suggest so. But also add suite style and apartment style, so the student always has an opportunity to upgrade, you know, as they matriculate through their institution. We always have the advantage of location, location, location.

 

Terry: Um-hum.

 

Norb: And, you know, we may be faced with a lot of competition from the private sector around the country, but we still have location, location, location. And as we’re bound by parking problems, other transportation problems, and as we move into integrating the academic community into the residential setting, I think what we’ll find is we’ll have different kinds of problems. you know, we’re again going to be faced with a high demand for on-campus housing, and I see on a number of campuses, that as they’ve added the suits and apartments, and their demand has increases, now they have the problem of finding space for everybody that wants housing. So they go back to the temporary triples, or putting students in lounges, you know, the other alternatives that folks have.

 

Scott: That appears to be a national phenomenon.

 

Norb: Yeah.

 

Scott: The number of schools that are forced to triple freshmen just because of lack of space. Another advantage to going with apartments and suites besides marketing advantage is this demand took a dramatic turnaround, and 10 or 15 years from now, students for whatever reason, whatever happened in the economy, did not want to live on campus. You’ve now got units that are marketable to graduate students, to faculty, to administrators, if you’ve got self contained apartments. You don’t have that liberty if you’ve got the traditional corridor-centered apartments.

 

Norb: Yeah, that’s a great point because there’s a lot to be said about constructing flexibility into a project.

 

Scott: Um-hum.

 

Norb: And if you don’t have load bearing walls, you know, that 10 or 15 years from now you can take down and change the configuration of that accommodation, that’s wonderful. Where as you’ve mentioned, you know, allowing space in 10 or 15 years when the single student demand comes down for families and faculty and single grads and so forth, flexibility means everything in the construction.

 

Kevin: Yeah, we also had a demand for single rooms around undergraduates, and out of an inventory of 6,900 we have just over a 100 single rooms, and that’s largely because we bought a nursing home, a retirement home, about 15 years ago, which was all single rooms, but we haven’t built single rooms new. Boston University opened a residence hall last fall. Eight hundred, sixty single bedrooms, four to an apartment. They were fully self-contained apartments, and the building is 19 or 20 stories tall, over looks the Charles River in Boston. It’s right on Commonwealth Avenue. And they’ve a waiting list to get in.

 

Scott: Yeah.

 

Norb: Doesn’t surprise me.

 

Kevin: The rent that they’re charging is $8,300 for nine months, and our most expensive, which is our luxury two-bedroom townhouse apartments, they are about 64, 65 hundred, depending on the location. And so at that price the question was would students pay it? And the answer is absolutely.

 

Terry: Absolutely. Yeah.

 

Kevin: But the other part of it, as an educator, are you only going to have wealthy students in there. You know, there are many students, you know, in higher education today for whom $2,000 difference in rent means a lot.

 

Terry: Yes.

 

Scott: Let me interject something here, because this is a question that I have. And, of course, I went—I’m 48, so I went through college quite a while ago. And it was considered back then, and I just absolutely cringe to hear some of the prices now. On one hand, um, I think you both alluded to the fact that with housing costs, rising, I mean, Kevin, especially you, you talked about the fact that with housing costs, with overall costs rising, people expect a certain level of amenities. But on the other hand, isn’t … isn’t the … the effort on the part of the institution to provide those amenities, whether it’s Internet access or 24-hour snack bar in the building or, or single rooms or apartment style, whatever. Doesn’t that start to chase its own tail? In other words, isn’t that then jacking the whole thing up even further?

 

Kevin: I think to some degree, yes.

 

Scott: But I think as Norb said earlier, there’s a tremendous advantage to freshmen for the traditional residence halls. It really forces them to socialize, to get out into the halls, and get to know people. So I think there’s always going to be a market there for that. And then that progression that Norb referred to as sophomores, we try to get them into four-person and eight-person suites, and the eight-person suites are the most popular. So you have two double bedrooms with their own bath, then on the other side two double bedrooms with bath, and then a shared living room and kitchenette. And that also is a tremendous social experience. But then when they get into the six and four person apartments in juniors and seniors, it’s not uncommon in our experience that you would have nine apartments on a wing, and the people would know, you know, people in four or five of the other apartments.

 

Terri: Um-hum.

 

Scott: The apartments become very insular and they don’t lend themselves to community. And I don’t know if you’ve done a lot more looking at the national scene than I have. But I don’t know if some, you know, if some schools are doing some things to over come that. Certainly academic programming in the building would be one.

 

Terry: Okay.

 

Norb: Yeah. A couple of thoughts as well. There are some institutions that are incorporating an area of stimulation, or a lounge, if you will, in and among a cluster of apartments. That has worked reasonably well. Other institutions are looking at the Internet as being the front porch to the apartments. In place of a lounge, you know, students are using the Internet to get to know each other and build acquaintances, send photos of one another to each other, even though they live next-door.

 

Terry: Um-hum.

 

Norb: And I think sometimes we have to get out of thinking that staying in an apartment is all bad. You know, we got to thinking when I was in the University, I’d spend hours in the library. Well, that was supposed to be a good thing, but now students spend hours on the Internet conducting research, and that’s not a good thing? So I think we can use technology as well to our advantage to help increase kind of the front porch of the residence hall. The other is a comment about amenities. And as I’ve researched publications going back about 40 years in student housing, the amenities question has always been there. You know, if you carpet these rooms, you know, isn’t the cost of these rooms [laughter] going to be so high that you’re going to force people off campus. You know, if you bring a cafeteria on campus and make it a part of a room and board contract, is the cost not going to be so high. And over the years, we’ve added amenities all the time, you know, whether it was carpet, whether it was air conditioning, whatever the case might be. So I think we have always tried to maintain, you know, the technology as it relates to amenities over time. You know, now with the multi-mode fiber, the apartment-style living, oh, goodness, the weight rooms, the academic support centers, 24 hour desk services, convenience stores, you know these are the amenities of this time. Will all of those be here in ten years. Probably some of them. But I’ll be surprised to see what the new amenities will be in ten years. So the amenities question has always been there.

 

Kevin: Okay. One of the hot amenities right now in addition to the ones that Norb just mentioned is the all-purpose ID card, which becomes your key card for entering your residence hall, in some cases your residence rooms. But, you know, it’s your library card, your dining card, it’s your recreation complex card, it’s a one card does all. And many college have gone in that direction. It can also be expanded to be a debit card where it can be used in the bookstore, the vending machines, and … and from talking to students the best part of it all is if you’re a typical undergraduate, mom and dad are paying for it [laughter].

 

Terry: Right. Yep.

 

Kevin: And that’s the down side, by the way. We could use it in our bookstore, but our concern is our students would be running up tabs for non-books -- sweatshirts, t-shirts, athletic equipment, and it just adds another burden on the parents, but we’re getting increasing pressure form the students to add the bookstore on there.

 

Terry: Um-hum.

 

Kevin: I think also we’re going toward a cashless society, which that card facilitates. If a student can buy anything they need on campus using their card, then you have less cash floating around, and that makes auditors very, very happy. It’s also a situation which off-campus vendors now are competing to give you student discounts, and will even allow the students to use a debit card say to get a haircut, and then what happens is they, you know, they’ll pay a commission back to the institution. Now, we resisted doing that, but there’s a couple of companies nationwide right now that they’re really recruiting very, very hard on college campuses to get them to switch over to that. And they basically would become the broker. They would identify all the local businesses which would take your student’s debit card in lieu of cash. They will set up the relationships, they will do the advertising, and of course they get a commission on it.

 

Terry: You bet. Yeah. And the university would get a residual off of each transaction.

 

Kevin: Um-hum.

 

Terry: Yeah, yeah.

 

Kevin: I think, the other changes from the ‘50s, probably the thing that bothers our students the most, as I understand it, residence halls both in the ‘50s and ‘60s, you could get a three percent HUD loan for your residence hall, which even then was a very low rate of interest and a 30-year bond. And if the furniture was attached to the wall—

 

Terry: Yeah.

 

Kevin: —you could finance that through the three percent loan, as opposed to having to go out and get a second loan, you know at five percent or six percent to buy the furniture. So we came up with all this built in furniture.

 

Terry: Um-hum.

 

Kevin: And to us that’s the one thing that students really resent.

 

Terry: Yeah.

 

Kevin: They want the flexibility, they want to be able to rearrange their room, the stack, stackable module of furniture is very, very hot, even when you’re not tripling. Students like the idea of being able to put their beds up, put their desk underneath the bed, then they’ll bring in a chair or a couch—

 

Terry: Yeah.

 

Kevin: —or something like that. So taking, ripping out that furniture, most of which was almost indestructible, it’s made out of oak and ash [laughter]. When you’re going to renovate one of these buildings though, when you’re finished, the transformation is amazing.

 

Terry: Yeah.

 

Kevin: What you do is you just strip it down to the bare walls and you do everything. You can’t always do it at one shot. But you might do it over two or three summers. And a lot of schools are doing that. We also because of our pressure for housing at Boston College, our traditional residence halls in which about 17, 18 hundred of our freshman live, we needed more housing. So what we did is there were nice English Tutor buildings, but all built between 1957 and 1968. We are taking the roof off them and adding a fourth floor, and picking up beds that way. And what are we doing on that fourth floor? We’re building non-traditional little suites.

 

Terry: Suites, yeah.

 

Kevin: Four-person suites.

 

Terry: Um-hum.

 

Kevin: So a number of students who otherwise would not have wanted to live in those buildings, they’re not standing in line to get into the suites.

 

Terry: Um-hum.

 

Kevin: So I think, I’m really—

 

Scott: Kevin, if I could just interrupt for a moment, is that a project that is going on now at Boston College.

 

Kevin: Yes.

 

Scott: Okay. I would like to talk to you separately, or maybe you could direct me toward someone at the university, I could maybe get some pictures and some background information.

 

Kevin: Be happy to do that.

 

Scott: Architects rendering or something on that. That might be a project they would want to highlight in the article.

 

Kevin: Um-hum.

 

Scott: Sorry, go ahead.

 

Kevin: Yep. ` How soon are you looking at doing your article? You said next week or something like that?

 

Scott: I’m, I’m hoping to wrap up, I need to wrap up the reporting on this next week.

 

Kevin: Okay, because SCUP, SCUP and Terry Calhoun knows about this. They always do tours of local campuses before and during their national convention, and we’re doing about eight tours in Boston.

 

Scott: Um-hum.

 

Kevin: And one of them is of different types of residence halls on three different campuses: Boston University with the 816 single bedrooms; Northeastern University, which is downtown Boston, has a new, it’s almost an S-shaped building that I understand is all suites, I haven’t been inside it yet; and then they’re looking at this project where we’re taking 1950’s and 60’s buildings, we have totally gutted the interiors, we finished that project about a year ago, now we’re adding this fourth floor. And they’re very—it’s single bedroom apartments, suites, and then traditional residence halls totally rehabbed, so that—and typically we get 40 or 50 people going on tour. They’re also doing tours that may be for other articles from University Business Magazine. They’re doing tours of libraries in Boston. Those things are pretty interesting.

 

Scott: Um-hum.

 

Kevin: And Terry has all the information on that.

 

Scott: Okay.

 

Kevin: Terry has all the information on everything.

 

Scott: And so it seems like.

 

Terry: It’s all on our website, at www.scup.org

 

Kevin: Yes.

 

Norb: A comment about the furniture. Um, I’m very familiar with the type of furniture that you had mentioned, and I can even think of a campus where that certainly was the case, and the tower that was built is many years old. They still are receiving a 0 percent retention. They put first year students in there every year, and every one of them move out after that year. And it’s exactly what you mentioned.

 

Kevin: Yeah.

 

Norb: You know, there is no personalization in those suites, because the beds, the desks, the dressers, the wardrobes, everything are attached. And the window is about a hundred square inches. [laughter] There’s no opportunity to personalize the space, and, you know, clearly, you know, a campus like that needs to pull that furniture out.

 

Kevin: Yeah, the term cell blocks is frequently—

 

Norb: Yeah.

 

Kevin: Yeah. Yeah.

 

Norb: But we certainly have seen, as you mentioned too, the wonderful flexibility in furnishings. You know, now that you’ve got the adjustable beds, and you’ve got things like dressers and desks and so forth that are all of the same height, that students can expand their desktop surface to accommodate the kind of technology that they’re bringing in. The wardrobes now are integrated into that, and students really like that. What I’ve found is that for years we had gone—when we moved away from metal furniture into more wood furniture, the students originally liked sort of the light color blond oak. And today, they much would prefer the cherry finish or walnut finish, as a more rich finish. And our satisfaction studies, you know, clearly indicate 90, 95 percent of the students would prefer that, the rich finish to the furnishings in the room as well as the lounges and lobbies and so forth.

 

Scott: Okay.

 

Kevin: Norm mentioned earlier fitness rooms in residence halls. Those are very, very popular. Free weights, cardiovascular equipment, like treadmills, Stairmasters. Not only because of the physical fitness dimension, but they add a social dimension. Kids’ll just kind of go down there and if all the machines are occupied and you might have eight machines or ten machines in a residence hall of a 150 students. They’ll just hang out. It’s a place to go see people and it’s also a place, you know, for … for guys and gals to get to know one another in a non-threatening environment. So we have found that those fitness rooms have served a number of purposes beyond just physical fitness. And when you have a residence hall that doesn’t have one, then the students come to you and say, “Why not?” And with these new card keys, now, what you is the nearest residence hall that does have one, you just program the outdoor key so the students can enter both buildings. They can enter the building where they live without the fitness room, and go next-door to the building where they don’t live but has the fitness room. And, again, it increases interaction among people.

 

Norb: That, and when you’re in a location where the weather can become inclement, you know, during the winter months, you know, it’s a wonderful opportunity for the men and women to get together. Here our fitness rooms tend to be outside.

 

Kevin: Oh, right.

 

Norb: Yeah, you know, whether it’s sports fields or courts or so forth, they’re filled all hours of the day. Yeah, you can drive around here three or four o’clock in the morning and the tennis courts are full, the volley ball courts are full, and they just find a different time for their fitness, if you will. No excuses here, not to … not to be fit. You know, they’ve got 365 days, I guess. Um, I wanted to talk a little, you know, we’re talking about fitness rooms, which is certainly an amenity, and I have mentioned earlier about residentially-based academic communities. We’re currently constructing a new complex that will be an Honors residential college, and it’ll be for 608 students. What we’re doing is constructing accommodations for faculty, offices for faculty, smart classrooms, space for academic advisors, space for tutors, small group study, library space, activity space. Really, the academic piece of the college campus is being integrated into this residential community, and this facility will be for honor students, Merit students and National Achievement students. And what we’re finding is as we work with the students in the original design, is they’re awfully excited about the possibility of having, you know, the faculty not only live there, but have offices there and teach there and talk to them at night.

 

Kevin: Um-hum.

 

Norb: And this is that higher end of that academic community that I referred to as a residential college, but certainly a lot of institutions are beginning to … or incorporate that academic angle, or twist if you will, into that residential setting. Now we know that when faculty are integrated into the residential community, the retention of students goes up, their grade points go up, their psycho-social development will increase, retention to graduation is going to go up and so forth and so on. And our purpose is to run some data, on outcomes so that we can sit down with the academic community and say, “We’ve got this wonderful facility in place. It works well, the faculty are there. You know, the deans are a part of this. Take a look at the outcomes.” Because I think over time in the next five to eight years, what we’ll find is other campuses are finding is that the academic community and residential setting are going to come … become tighter together, almost a European model of sorts.

 

Scott: Um-hum.

 

Norb: It’s a much more expensive model.

 

Scott: It certainly is.

 

Norb: It also is, is very dependent upon recruiting faculty who really want to do this. And you also have to convince students that this is good for them. We’ve done a lot of research on that. In fact, there’s a group out of Kentucky, at a university down there, that runs a workshop every two years at Oxford University, and the topic for the one three years ago was, “Residential Colleges,” and so we had about 33 people there from colleges throughout the United States. And then we had two or three people from Oxford. And it was really interesting. You know, people had these very exciting ideas, and the literature is very exciting. You know, we talk about total learning communities, which is not a new idea. There’s a fellow called Hal Riker, who’s a legend in the Association of College and University Housing Officers …

 

Scott: Yeah.

 

Norb: … and he wrote the landmark book in 1971 or ’72 on living learning centers, so 30 years later we’re coming back to the same concept.

 

Scott: He’s way ahead of hisself.

 

Norb: Yeah. And it’s one of those things is, the faculty want the residence halls to be more academic. But the question is, are they willing to, or do they have the time to invest to make that happen? And very often they don’t. There’s tremendous pressure on them to do more research, more publications, more community service. And so you need some very special faculty members who are doing it for the educational reasons.

 

Scott: Absolutely.

 

Norb: And not just to get free housing.

 

Scott: You bet. If the motivation is to stay connected to students, you can find some of those folks. You know, if the motivation is that the institution is going to recognize that service as a part of the tenure process …

 

Kevin: Right.

 

Scott: … you will certainly find some faculty. You know, if … what we have found is that faculty who’s children have graduated from college want to maintain contact with college-age students, outside of the classroom, and we’ve been successful in finding some faculty that are associate and full professors, a little later on.

 

Kevin: Sorry, Norm, I didn’t quite follow that. Could you recap that briefly?

 

Norb: Certainly there are faculty whose sons and daughters have graduated from college.

 

Kevin: Uh-hum.

 

Norb: So these faculty are now in their later 40s, early 50s.

 

Kevin: Okay.

 

Norb: And in order for them to maintain some contact with students outside of the classroom, they’re very interested in becoming faculty and residents.

 

Kevin: Oh, I see.

 

Norb: And moving back into the residence halls for them to do that.

 

Kevin: So not necessarily that their student … that their children attended that University.

 

Norb: Right.

 

Kevin: But simply that they’re basically empty nesters.

 

Norb: Exactly.

 

Scott: Um-hum.

 

Norb: Yep. We’ve got a faculty in residence that’s been there for 16 years and doctor Butler is a distinguished service professor for journalism.

 

Kevin: Oh, okay.

 

Norb: And I wish we could find the mold [laughter] where the man was created. I’d love to have about 10 more of him. But he spends every night in the residence hall. The academic, provides the academic advising for all the students in the hall. Sits down and, you know talks about things that are outside of journalism and has one of the highest retentions of any residence hall we have. Everybody knows Doctor B, you know, and it’d be great to have a few more of him.

 

Kevin: Yeah.

 

Scott: And what … now just from my background, what kind of living quarters does he have then?

 

Norb: He has a two-bedroom apartment. Well, he’s in between facilities right now. The facility that we opened this past summer, we are currently building the faculty and staff apartment. It’ll be a stand alone facility with a shared backyard, for the full-time housing professional as well as for Doctor Butler.

 

Scott: Okay.

 

Norb: And the shared backyard is large so that he can host receptions—

 

Scott: Okay.

 

Norb: —have hors d’oeuvres, have small entertaining groups and so forth out there.

 

Scott: Um-hum.

 

Norb: Invite the students into his apartment so to speak, so he can bring 40 or 50 students in there. So we try to provide a large enough living room and shared backyard.

 

Scott: So basically it’s a two-bedroom apartment with a large backyard.

 

Norb: You bet.

 

Scott: Okay. Okay.

 

Kevin: That, that’s unusual. That’ll be a very interesting model.

 

Norb: Yeah, and the one that we’re currently constructing, we have two faculty and one full-time housing professional with a shared backyard. A same kind of arrangement. You know, we’re going to have pavers out there and electric and lighting and the whole works, again, for the receptions, and bring a musical ensemble into something like that. So, again, inviting them sort of into their home.

 

Scott: And this is adjacent to the residence hall.

 

Norb: Yes.

 

Scott: Okay.

 

Norb: They’re stand-alone facilities.

 

Terry: Folks can I interrupt for a short break while I flip the tape?

 

Scott: Okay.

 

- SHORT BREAK -

 

Scott: Okay. We had been talking about this faculty in residence and sort of what it takes to get people to do that, and Norb had mentioned that empty-nesters are more willing to do this. Um, does this—what’s the limitation on how far a university could go with living learning. Is it the students, is it the faculty, is it the budget, is it the space?

 

Norb: Yeah.

 

Scott: All four. [laughter]

 

Norb: I think it varies a little bit everywhere. Here, the academic portion of our construction is going to be covered by a fund that is used for classroom construction and so forth. So I’ve been able to marry a couple of different financial sources together. There are other campuses where that sort of non-revenue producing space is covered by the housing operation in that construction or even … or even within the renovation.

 

Scott: Okay.

 

Norb: Um, I think it varies from campus to campus, and I … you probably have hit four or five those items that are certainly going to make that project work or not.

 

Scott: Okay.

 

Kevin: I think the key though is what we talked about earlier, and that is, if you really want to do something, if the motivation is there and you’re convinced that this is going to improve the quality of education, you usually can find the resources. You know, when we’re convinced we need a new football stadium, a new recreation complex [laughter] we build it.

 

Norb: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

 

Kevin: But when it gets to something like this. It’s a tough sell.

 

Norb: Yeah.

 

Kevin: Because even within academic circles, I’m not in the faculty so I’m seeing the world differently. I used to teach one course, but now I’m teaching full time. You’re competing with, you know, with other academic needs. And other, you know, other resources. So they’re saying, yes, it would be nice to have faculty and residents, but, you know, we really need another professor in linguistics—

 

Norb: Right, right.

 

Kevin: —or something like that. And so it’s an expensive proposition. I think also you mentioned students. As I said earlier, not all students want a faculty member living in their building.

 

Norb: Um-hum.

 

Kevin: They like the world, it’s, you know, it’s a bi—bipart—it’s two worlds: There’s my academic life, and then there’s my persona life. And it’s almost like a light built switches on and off as they approach the academic [inaudible], and there are a number of students like that. Now, that’s not the way it should be—

 

Norb: That’s a great—

 

Kevin: —and it’s our job to try to change their minds.

 

Norb: Yeah. That’s a great point. Our experience has been with our faculty in residence is that sitting at the faculty member’s office in the residence hall is great. Sitting in a lounge and having a conversation is fantastic. You know, going out on the basketball court and shooting hoops together or playing a board game together, fantastic. But I don’t want the faculty member in my room. You know, that’s my private space. And so we have over time, you know, identified those things and our faculty in residence don’t go into student rooms, because that’s the student’s space. But you’re absolutely right.

 

Kevin: There’s another story there and this is private religious affiliated colleges. Boston College is a Jesuit college, we have 28 of them in the United States. But there’s, for example, 235 Catholic-affiliated colleges, and there’s almost an equal number of colleges affiliated with other religion, religious denominations, mostly Protestant. But in order to preserve and continue their religious identity, many of those colleges now are trying to have more people, like priests or sisters or chaplains, live in the residence halls. We’ve got a very program at Boston College on that. And that has worked out very well. As long as, as what Norb said, they don’t invade the privacy of the students’ rooms, but also as long as they’re in there for the right reasons. And believe me, living in a residence hall is not a job.

 

Scott: Right.

 

Kevin: Because you keep their hours whether you want to or not [laughter].

 

Scott: Yeah.

 

Kevin: But you have to give them, these people amenities. I think if you can afford to do it, to have it adjacent to, but not inside the residence hall, that’s a tremendous incentive for somebody to do it. But if you are 45 or 50 years old, most people are not ready to move back into a residence hall and stay up till three in the morning.

 

Norb: Of if they are, it may be for a couple of years.

 

Kevin: Yeah.

 

Norb: But not a Doctor Butler, 16-year kind of thing.

 

Kevin: That’s right.

 

Norb: Yeah.

 

Scott: Yeah, that definitely sounds unusual. Now Notre Dame, their goal, and they’re having a little trouble reaching it now, but they have always had at least one religious, either a priest or a brother or a sister living in each of their residence halls with no administrative responsibilities. They were there as counselors and friends, and that is a major selling point, because, you know, they are, you know, one of the primary Catholic universities in the country. People who look to a Notre Dame or a Georgetown or a Boston College or a Santa Clara, they’re looking for a religious dimension in the residence halls. And so having clergy live in is a tremendous positive marketing thing. But it’s not just a marketing thing. I think if you can find the religious, and, you know, there are declining number of religious in all faiths, but if you can find them, I see that as a real plus.

 

Norb: Absolutely. You talked a little bit about affordability, Kevin, and I, wanted to share a couple of numbers that folks might find interesting. In 1998, we ran a national study of construction, and we looked at both suite style construction and apartment style construction. And the average per bed construction costs in 1998 for a suite was $32,000. For apartments it was $34,000. And we’re in the middle of a study right now, and we’re going back and looking at all the new projects that have occurred since 1998, and the average cost per bed for a suite is $42,000, and for an apartment is $43,000. So in three years, the average has gone up almost $10,000 for construction.

 

Kevin: And in the northeast those costs …

 

Scott: And that’s a nationwide survey, Norb?

 

Norb: That was nationwide but again, it’s going to be different regionally, as well as institutionally.

 

Scott: Sure. Okay.

 

Kevin: Ah—

 

Scott: I’m sorry, Kevin, go ahead.

 

Kevin: I think that your colleges in the non-urban setting and maybe in the southwest and in, you know, some areas in the south, maybe the Midwest, might be dragging that down. Certainly in the northeast.

 

Norb: You’re dragging it up, right? [laughter]

 

Kevin: In the north … yeah, in the northeast we’re at the high end.

 

Norb: Yeah.

 

Kevin: You know, you’re looking now, if you’re looking, building a residence hall in Boston area, you start at $55,000 a day.

 

Norb: Yeah.

 

Kevin: And then if you want to go deluxe, I don’t know what the numbers are in the BU residence hall. Clearly, they’re much more than that. Fordham University has built some residence halls in New York City and they were in the $55-60,000 range, and that was three, four years ago.

 

Norb: Um-hum.

 

Kevin: So certainly it’s very, very expensive to build in places where the rent is high, you know. If you go to Chicago, you go to Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, New York City, the major cities, certainly in the northeast and Midwest, you’d be higher than those numbers. In fact, it’ll be interesting to see when you break it out regionally, you know, how the numbers differ.

 

Scott: You bet. It’ll be a little scary probably.

 

Norb: Let me throw one other thing in here related to that. Um, to what extent has that been that kind of inflation, which is kind of scary, been driven or been permitted by the kind of boom that we’ve had for an impressive number of years now, and a boom which very clearly is coasting to a half, or least coasting to an end. Are colleges and universities going to be able to afford those kinds of figures, much less the kinds of figures that would come from projecting those a few years into the future.

 

Scott: I think Kevin, earlier I had mentioned that, you know, that what you charge is what they’re going to pay.

 

Norb: Um-hm.

 

Scott: And, and Kevin, if I’m not mistaken that your experience is, you know, by charging six or eight thousand dollars, the students are paying debt, and we find it the same. Ours are not as high because we’re not in the Boston area. But again, the students are paying that. What we have tried to do is to identify a broad range of room types and room rates.

 

Norb: Uh-hm.

 

Scott: We have 40 different room rates at the University of Florida. So everything from a non-air co-op space, you know, through a self-contained luxurious apartment, if you will, and lots of things in between.

 

Norb: That’s in Gainsville.

 

Scott: That’s in Gainsville.

 

Norb: Okay.

 

Scott: What we’re finding though is, again, we’re in our fourth construction project right now. Is that if I decide that I need to build again. In our campus master plan there’s a good likelihood in 2006 I’ll build another large complex. I’m going to be hard pressed to go out for a bond, because of the local market and turn that into an affordable rent. Our difficult here is that the style of construction that we have, which is all block and brick and is mandated by a certain standard, I need masons. And we can’t find masons here.

 

Kevin: That’s right.

 

Scott: So the masons drive the project, they drive the numbers on the project, they drive the schedule of the project. So a lot of folks are trying to replace masonry with metal studs or with autoclave aerated concrete, or with a lot of other kind of products just to reduce the amount the masonry in a job and reduce the cost. It’s very, it’s going to be very difficult for me to do that, because we have such a large number of projects starting in the next two or three years, that my alternative may not be to do it in the traditional bond, either CM or hard bit process, that I may have to go and talk to a developer and partner with the developer the next time around.

 

Norb: Hm. Interesting. Kevin how, how are you, how did you finance all the bids, you know, in the—in that massive expansion that you had described.

 

Kevin: Largely by—we have an authority in Massachusetts called Heath and Educational Facilities Authority, which is a bonding agency. And what we do is we, we borrow the money, and, and usually they’re, I think they’re 30-year notes, is pay them off over 30 years. And housing totally supports itself in terms of, of financing everything connected with housing. And the way you do it is you just keep edging up your room rates to pay off your bonds.

 

Norb: You bet.

 

Kevin: And, and like Norb mentioned earlier, we now have some notes that were from the early ‘70s that have been retired, you know, their 30 years is up. Right now, I would say, in Boston, the demand—There’s a tremendous pressure right now. The major of Boston, Yermanino, and the Boston Redevelopment Authority, went to all the major universities and their facilities in the city of Boston, and said, you have to help the city solve its housing problems by getting your students back on your campuses. You come to us for a permit for anything, tell us how you’re going to increase the amount the housing like at residence halls. So if you want to build a Chemistry building, tell us what you’re going to do for housing [laughter]. Then we’ll talk to you about it. And, you know, Boston is a city is 675,000 people and 225,000 are between the ages of 17 and 25. You’ve got 65 colleges in the greater Boston area. Not all in the city of Boston. But Boston is a huge college town. It dictates—many of the leases in Boston run on an academic year cycle. They start September 1^st and they end August 31^st. Whether you’re a college student or not, you’re required to put three months rent up as a security deposit. So in the case of students, if they go home in May, the landlord’s got the rent for June, July and August.

 

Scott: Um-hum.

 

Kevin: But you can also be a 35-year-old officer worker and still be required to put up the three months’ security deposit in advance. It’s a very different city than other cities which I have some familiarity.

 

Norb: That touches on something that I’d like to raise. A lot of the people I’ve talked to already on this topic, have talked about, oh, living learning communities, apartments, suites, various strategies that institutions of higher education are using to attract upper division students back to live on campus. Um, and I guess my question is, and this is, this is something not specifically on student housing, but perhaps on the kinds of philosophies and missions that affect it. I don’t recall this kind of thing being an issue back in the, in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Back in my generation it was just you went—you definitely lived on campus as a freshman, the middle years were sort of a few, and by senior year a healthy percentage of people lived off-campus and I didn’t, I didn’t perceive then, and I see very clearly now a drive on the part of many colleges and universities, they want those upper division students back on campus, and not because they major is telling them they have to—

 

Scott: Right.

 

Norb: —but because they want to enhance the quality of campus life. And I’m not, so I’m not sure if the question really is, why are they doing it now, is, what’s changed? Why are they doing it now, when they weren’t doing it a generation ago?

 

Scott: I think I still have a couple of different things. You know, certainly there are cities where the major is saying you need to move them on campus. But I think for most folks, and I’m glad you used the word philosophy. It is a philosophical question.

 

Norb: Um-hum.

 

Scott: For other folks it’s purely economical. Because they have not built residence halls, and a lot of Midwestern institutions for instance, whose enrollments have dropped, are looking for ways to fill those residence halls, you know, versus tearing some of them down,

 

Norb: Yeah.

 

Scott: Which is what they’re also doing . So that’s certainly a way to, to bring folks back and fill some beds. And I think it’s more of a philosophical discussion. You know, if you’re not required residency, and I don’t have a freshman residency requirement here. You know, my philosophy is I would like to have a number of upper class living in the residence halls, to perform the mentoring role, the role modeling, if you will to the entry level student. Now, they could be exempt as staff members or members of an area government or residence hall association. They could be athletes for that matter. There’s a number of students that may be exempt from that. But I too want upper class students living in the floors, even if they have singled, you know in order to provide that mentoring world to the entry level student. It’s interesting when you have an entry level student sitting down with a junior, and there was an interesting study recently where they asked the entry level students, “How much do you think the sophomores and juniors drink? And they gave this answer.

 

Norb: Um-hum.

 

Scott: And they asked the sophomores and juniors, “How much do you drink?” And they gave this answer. Then they brought the two together as groups. And the freshman clearly thought that these fresh … sophomores and juniors were drinking off the scale, and the sophomores and juniors were saying, “God, if I drank that much I wouldn’t be here anymore.” And just that. that realization that there’s a stereotype or a perception out there that is broken, because of that conversation, means everything to me philosophically.

 

Norb: Yeah.

 

Scott: And if I can attain that, that’s great. But there are some places obviously that, you know, have different circumstances.

 

Norb: I think the term they used for that is social norming.

 

Scott: Yeah.

 

Norb: And freshman’s expectations of upper classroom behavior generally are worse and more exaggerated than the actual behavior.

 

Scott: [laughs] Yeah.

 

Norb: So I’d also like not to put down the media, but the media also think our students are doing a lot more than they really are doing.

 

Scott: Oh, oh absolutely.

 

Norb: That’s negative.

 

Kevin: Yeah.

 

Scott: Definitely.

 

Norb: Yeah.

 

Scott: So is—

 

Norb: I think one of the other phenomenon though is increasingly colleges are looking at establishing a life-lone relationship with their students, and one of the most important years in that is senior year. It’s a bonding year. If you bring your seniors back on campus, and they cement or bond and form those friendships, a number of which will go for many years if not for a lifetime, you know, that’s a real positive thing, in terms of developing your alumni. And your alumni, it’s not just to raise money. It’s loyalty to the institution. It supports your events. It’s, it’s—they become your, your number one recruiters. If you have a happy graduate, that’s, that’s the most important admissions recruiter you can have.

 

Scott: You bet.

 

Norb: Undergraduates who had a great experience at their school. And having the upper classman on campus really improves that, that situation. And for them it also makes, it’s a much higher degree of satisfaction. It’s also, in senior year you’re going through all this thing, you know, will I go to graduate school? If so, am I going to get into the graduate school I want to go into? Am I going to get a job? You know, life after college. If you have them all together sharing those experiences, you’re going to have a much happier student body. And, and also a study body that they form their own support groups. And so I think there are other reasons, other than just financial reasons, but certainly financi—finances is one, if you have vacancy problem, and some schools do.

 

Terry: This is, this is Terry interrupting. It’s—we have 23 minutes left on the call, and they’ll—they’re going to shut us right off at 4:30 so—

 

Scott: Okay. Okay. In connection with what we were just talking about, is it fair to say then that colleges and universities have generally become more sophisticated in how to use their housing as a way to carry out their academic missions.

 

Norb: I think definitely so.

 

Scott: Yeah, I agree.

 

Norb: Um-hum.

 

Scott: Can you think of any other—other aspects of that?

 

Norb: We’ve talked about living learning a little bit, we’ve talked about keeping upper division students on campus to serve as mentors.

 

Scott: I think there are other things for example in orientation programs now.

 

Norb: Um-hum.

 

Scott: Most of your better—you know, orientation used to be one day. You came in, you got your books, you registered for your classes, and they might have a few things on, you know, social expectations and stuff like that. Or it might be two days. Now many colleges are running, you know, three-day orientations, live-in orientations during the summer. They’ll take a freshman class, as in our cases of twenty-one hundred and break them into groups of three or four hundred and run, you know, seven, you know, seven three-day programs.

 

Norb: Yeah.

 

Scott: But then you break them down into much smaller groups and you have one upper classman to each ten or twelve students, and the upper classmen become the mentors and role models for the under—for the freshmen, and this is the summer before they enter. And then at the end of the summer, you run another three-day one that picks up all those students who for whatever reason -- finances or travel or job who are unable to come during the summer. And I see that as a model, at least in the schools which I’m familiar, the Jesuit schools and the schools in the northeast as an increasing phenomena. It also raises the students’ expectations, it gets them excited about going to college. But it also encourages them to think beyond just the social aspects and really, you know, when you’re at college these are the kinds of things that you ought to be looking at, you know, the big life questions. You know, what do you want to get out of college? What do you want to do with your life? What are you good at? What have you wanted to try and never had a chance to try? Intellectually, socially, athletically, that kind of thing. I think those orientations programs are really good. A good orientation program, it has to have a residential component I’m convinced, unless you’re a community college. And Norb and I have been talking I think largely about -- at least I have -- about residential colleges with more typical undergraduates. You’ve got that whole booming world of community colleges, which by and large have no residence halls, which is becoming an increasingly significant part of higher education.

 

Norb: Yeah.

 

Scott: But we—

 

Norb: But one of—

 

Scott: Yeah, we’ve limited our conversation largely I think to traditional, undergraduate, residential facilities.

 

Norb: Yeah, one of the trends, and I maybe should be trend with a very small “t”, but one of the things that I’ve heard about is, stud—is colleges in—colleges, not universities, but colleges that have traditionally been commuter schools adding, in some cases being fairly aggressive about adding dormitories, adding—adding residence halls, and I was talking to someone who said that they were seeing this movement even in the two-year schools, even community colleges -- trying to create—

 

Scott: Um-hum.

 

Norb: —much more of a campus, much more of a campus atmosphere, and not have the place shut down at thee or four o’clock every day.

 

Scott: And I think that folks are beginning the realize the benefit to the students of a residential setting.

 

Norb: Um-hum.

 

Scott: You know, a student that stays in a residence hall for one year is twelve percent more likely to graduate than the students who has spent no time in a residence hall. You know, that figure alone, really kind of shakes up senior administration as to the value and benefit of a residential community. Um, you know, I wanted to go back on your comments about orientation. We see that as well in large public institutions. Texas A&M’s Fish Camp, or Virginia Tech’s Pokey Camp.

 

Norb: Um-hum.

 

Scott: Or University of Florida is starting a camp of its own now. So even the big publics are getting much more involved in that extended orientation and as it connects even to a residential program. When I look back eight or nine years ago as the NCAA sort of discontinued the athletic dormitory, they knew the value of their athletes being mainstreamed into the residential population of the campus. I see now senior administration who know that the vast majority of first year students, even if there isn’t a residency requirement, are living in the residence halls, and they’re using, you know, the network as a technology in order to contact these students. Because your registration is now web based. A lot of the syllabus and information from individual professors and web pages and so forth is obviously web based. And what a wonderful conduit to get to the first year students when they live in the residence hall. It’s a controllable atmosphere, you can control the technology. If they’re all off campus spread out all over the place, it’s very, very difficult to be able to do that. I think folks are recognizing, you know, the residential setting’s benefits and merits increasingly.

 

Kevin: I think also through technology, if you can get the students, the names and addresses and email address of their room-mate or room-mates, say, by mid-July, certainly at the latest, you know, by early August, August 1^st or so, they’ll start communicating with one another.

 

Scott: Yeah.

 

Kevin: And they’re beginning to build a community already before they’ve ever actually got here. And … and I think that’s tremendously positive. It was very interesting, when we first went with technology, the port-at-every-pillow concept, in all of our residence halls, and that was about ten years or so ago, our fear was that students would sit in their rooms and not interact with one another and kind of—because they could do everything at that desk.

 

Scott: Right.

 

Kevin: Could do their term papers. And that rather than facilitating interaction, it would do the opposite. And we had Jesuit priest who came up—he’s now, he’s president of Holy Cross, came up with the term “agora” which is a Greek term for marketplace, where the entire Greek community would come together in ancient Greece. And he said we should that term instead of information highway, because information highway has the image each of us are our in own little car—

 

Scott: Ah.

 

Kevin: —travelling down the net, right? And the philosophy was great. But also what he predicted would happen if you preached that, and if you practiced that, that you’re going to improve communication. Much more frequent, you know, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and, and at least that’s been our experience. It’s been a tremendous community builder, and I don’t know, you know, if that’s been your experience Norb.

 

Norb: It certainly has.

 

Kevin: Yeah.

 

Norb: And, you know, it’s interesting, as we added the port for pillow some years ago, and it cost a lot of money to do that. And for us it was five and a half million, you know, just to put that infrastructure in place. And over time now, we’re faced with how do we upgrade these networks? And I can at any moment ask our network coordinator, how are the students using the network? And he can tell me what percent of the students are on the internet, what percent are using email, what percent are using games, who’s sharing copyrighted music files [laughter] and I think the question that a lot of housing officers are facing how is that if a student is using the network at any given time for ten percent of an academic pursuit, you know, why should I dump another two million dollars into a network to bring it up to Gig E when then that will allow them to stream video faster or do some of the other kinds of things that might be restricted because of the speed that they’re currently at, when they’re not using it necessarily for the academic pursuit. And I’ve had a lot of conversations with housing folks that are really in that dilemma. You know, it’s doing what it should right now, but I know that I need to upgrade, but if I upgrade it, I open another can of worms, and it’s not an academic can of works. So there’s an interesting frustration out there right now amongst the housing profession.

 

Kevin: One thing I could say, and you may be detecting that from at least the two of us, it’s really a very, very exciting field to be in today. There’s so much going on and it’s gone so far, you know, in 35, 40 years, from being simply, you know, providing beds for students. You’ve really become not just an administrator in housing, you’ve also become an educator. The whole concept of talking about residential life instead of dormitories—

 

Norb: Yeah.

 

Kevin: —the whole idea of—a seamless web is a term they use a lot in the literature, you’re trying to basically mesh what’s happening inside the classroom with what’s happening out side the classroom. Making education, you know, to use the term of the ‘60s, more relevant. And, and getting students to relate what’s happening in the classroom to their lives outside the classroom. What’s happening in housing right now is a primary area to do that outside, outside the, you know, academics in the narrow sense. And I think faculty is beginning to see that.

 

Norb: And coming back to something you mentioned earlier, Kevin, you know, Hal Riker was right.

 

Kevin: Uh-hm.

 

Norb: And it was funny how people almost laughed him out of the room, 30, 35 years ago. But the man was right.

 

Scott: Let me—this is—I hate in a way to kind of break this thread, because it’s very interested stuff, but let me—I’d like to go back to one thing that’s very logistic based. And this particularly relevant—

 

Operator: Your conference call will end in 10 minutes.

 

Terry: [laughs]

 

Scott: Anyway, nice reminder.

 

Terry: Didn’t know that was going to happen, but here we go.

 

Scott: At least they gave us a warning, Kevin

 

Norb: We’re pretty close to wrapping this up. But, Kevin, particularly in terms of your, your situation in Boston. So many institutions of higher education housing just not, not in the colleges themselves, but just in the whole area being tight, um, is it getting tough to find land to build housing?

 

Kevin: Absolutely.

 

Norb: Just, and one of the other things that tied to that is the whole issue of parking, that, I guess, parking lots are always inviting targets to build, to build something on, particularly housing, but then, but then, you’re being in more demand for parking while you’re getting rid of some of the parking you have. How are, how are some of the schools, you’re, you’re familiar with dealing with that kind of problem.

 

Kevin: Well, firstly, the rental market in the greater Boston area has never been higher. It’s the highest rent in the City of Boston. So there’s tremendous pressure to provide affordable housing on the part of the city. So by requesting that the schools build more beds, build more residence halls on their campuses, the city, you know, is trying to address that problem by having the colleges and the universities solve it. But because the colleges and the university in the greater Boston area for the most part are land poor, they’re locked in, they have only one direction to go and that’s up. So, for example, in BU’s case, you—do you really want to build a 19, 20-story building? Well, they have no land. They’ve got nowhere to go.

 

Norb: Yeah.

 

Kevin: In Boston College’s case, you know, we’re building more freshman housing by adding that fourth floor to traditional residence halls. The high-rise at Northeastern, my guess is it’s eight or ten floor or something like that. That’s the only way you can go. But I do think that the colleges and the universities have some obligation to help solve the problem. And I think also, on the other hand, the cities, and it’s not Boston, have some obligation to help the colleges and university in terms of land. As far as parking goes, most cities have a ratio or they have an authority that you go to. So if you’re adding 900 residence units, 900 beds in a residence hall, you’ve got to one of two things, either build a garage to provide more on campus parking or else totally ban cars. And most of us in the greater Boston area, we ban cars except for students, except for those who are commuting and those who have a need to fulfill their academic programs. So they’re a nurse who has a placement that you can’t get to by public transportation—

 

Norb: Okay.

 

Kevin: —student teachers. So, and I think it’s a combination of two. Build more parking and to have much stricter bans.

 

Scott: Norb, did you want to, want to address that question? Or are you—

 

Norb: Well, we’re fortunately—

 

Scott: —do you still (inaudible) plane land in Florida?

 

Norb: Fortunately a lot of the institutions in the southeast are not necessarily land-locked. So we still have the benefit of constructing residence halls that are four or five stories. The sites are not tight, so we can do a faculty and staff apartment as a stand-alone. Certainly parking is still going to be an issue with many of us. We do have to provide a percentage of parking spaces on a site when we construct a complex. But, again, it’s going to vary, you know, institution to institution. So—but generally, you know, I think Kevin’s absolutely correct. You don’t have the choice, you know, you’re going to have to go up. You know, it certainly wouldn’t be the first choice that any one of us would want to have. But when you have to add beds and that’s the only way to go, you don’t have a choice.

 

Scott: Let me—I think we might have time for one more question here. Um, and this something that we’ve kind of edged toward in the last hour or so. Um, talking about flexibility, talking about the past. The Baby Boom was the largest birth cohort in American history. That drove the big housing boom, whole boom of everything really in higher education back in the ‘60s and ‘70s. We’re seeing their, their children now driving this again. Um, it’s unlikely I think for any number of reasons that we’re going to see that kind of huge rise in enrollment again. What happens when enrollments start dropping in five or ten or fifteen years and, and hopefully, I guess, make a planners’ jobs easier. Enrollment’s kind of become a little more predictable and not these wild swings. Where does housing—what’s going to happen to housing then? What happens if there’s excess capacity?

 

Norb: That—and I think it, again, it’s going to vary a little bit in the state of Florida. For the next 18 years, I’m going to have nothing but a housing demands, as will every other state institution in Florida, again, because we have such a large migration of folks into the state, if not, you know, having a, a vacancy problem is not going to be an issue for us. I’ll, I’ll retire before I ever see that, if you will.

 

Scott: [laughs]

 

Norb: But clearly, there are a lot of institutions that currently face that, particularly in the Midwest, even with increased enrollments in a lot of institutions. Other institutions’ missions, I don’t know that they have kept up. Their admissions have not been aggressive enough. The program is not what the students are looking for. There are a lot of residence halls that are empty, that are idle that are being raised again, because there’s no students to put in those beds. I still like Kevin’s comments very early about the flexibility and the fact that as we build, and if we’re able to build non-load-bearing walls into these facilities, as we build apartments, that we, that we build with flexibility in mind, that in ten or fifteen years, if we have the opportunity to house single graduates, families, faculty, that we can renovate these facilities quickly and inexpensively, in such a way that we’re not moving load-bearing walls, where a great deal of the expense comes. So I would continue to encourage folks to not think for here and now; think strategically, think intentionally, take a look at the demographics that they have for the next fifteen or twenty years, and build with flexibility.

 

Kevin: And I totally agree with that. And, and looking ahead, you’ve got a potential customer pool, resident pool right on your campus, beyond your students, and that’s your staff and faculty. You get a city, like any of the major cities, it’s so expensive to live in the city, your administrators and your staff and your family are living twenty, twenty-five, thirty miles out in the suburbs. You have faculty that you’re recruiting from inexpensive rental areas and bringing them into a very expensive market, and their number one issue is beyond salary and academic opportunity—the first nonacademic thing they say to you is, what about housing?

 

Scott: Um-hum.

 

Kevin: I can’t afford this.

 

Norb: Yeah.

 

Kevin: And so I think if you plan wisely, if you’re an institution that’s doing well, you won’t have a problem in the future. And just one last comment -- and I always get nervous about this -- whenever we talk about trends and everything, there’s a tendency to over-generalize. You know, and trends are kind of like averages.

 

Scott: Right.

 

Kevin: But there are people with the empty residence halls and struggling to stay alive as an institution. They’re renting residence halls out to other colleges. And then there are people on the other end that are tripling, because they don’t have enough housing. So to me, you almost have to look at it institution by institution.

 

Scott: Right.

 

Terry: We’re pretty close to the end of time here.

 

Scott: Yeah, Terry, Terry, I’m out of questions. These guys have done a fabulous job.

 

Terry: I’m, I’m sitting here in awe at what a rich conversation this was. It’s really worked out well. Thanks to Scott in Chicago and to Norb in Florida and to Kevin who’s vacationing on Nantucket Island, very much. Thank you very much.

 

Kevin: Okay, you’re very welcome.

 

Norb: You’re very welcome.

 

Scott: This just has been, been a great resource for me, and I think Terry feels the same way.

 

Terry: Absolutely. Thanks to everyone. Bye.

 

The End