Ohio University's concerted efforts to boost enrollment for the 2005-06 academic year have paid off, at least in terms of raw numbers. While OU had less than 3,900 freshmen enrolling last fall, this year's freshman class consists of 4,200 students, making it the largest incoming class in the university's history. This quarter's record enrollment has triggered a significant housing crunch, causing numerous frustrations for the university and inconveniences for students. That is a problem that should have been addressed earlier in the push for increased enrollment, and it has to be addressed now.
Becoming bigger is consistently a top goal for most institutions of higher education. As it concerns OU's recent enrollment boost, however, increases in available housing are disproportionate with the greater number of students. Luckily, a home has been found for everyone, and a real crisis has been avoided. However, that did not come without some effort, including such strategies as converting double rooms into triples and bumping RAs into smaller rooms in order to accommodate the newcomers.
Actions like that will create increasingly unlivable housing conditions for students, with double rooms already small. Those rooms are students' homes and should be at least of reasonable size for the number of people residing. Additionally, any resulting discontent with university housing could create a lack of off-campus options and higher prices, which would only compound the problem. Building more residence halls seems the obvious solution, but that doesn't help in the here and now.
Clearly, the university was not fully prepared for its new class. If OU is to have another incoming class of equal or larger size, then efforts to adequately house the rising number of students should proceed. Worse yet, if future housing crunches are allowed to spiral further out of control, the quality of the unique experience OU offers its students could be lessened. Future retention rates and admissions could go down rather than up. Those are all reasonable concerns when one considers the utter impracticality of increasing enrollment, but not actual living space. Ultimately, OU's record enrollment would be far more commendable if the university could better house the new students.
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