Why many college students are forced to spend more on housing than tuition

The cost of housing has risen steeply in recent years, including for college students. Living in a dorm or renting an off-campus apartment can be the single largest expense a student faces, even more than tuition. Laura Barrón-López reports on how students are coping with the high cost of living and how some universities are responding. It’s the first part of our fall series, Rethinking College.
Geoff Bennett:
The cost of housing has risen sharply in recent years, including for college students. Living in a dorm or renting an off-campus apartment can be the single largest expense a student faces, even more than tuition.
Laura Barron-Lopez reports on how students are coping with the high cost of living and how some universities are responding. It’s the first part of our fall series Rethinking College.
Laura Barron-Lopez:
Senior Adrian Aguilar is studying civil engineering. But one of the biggest stressors during his time at the University of Texas at Austin has not been academics. It’s how much he has to pay in rent.
When you left home to go to college, did you ever expect to have to worry this much about housing?
Adrian Aguilar, College Student:
Not at all. I didn’t think that it was customary for each person to be paying over a grand for decent apartments. I just didn’t know.
Laura Barron-Lopez:
Aguilar was raised in a rural city south of Houston by parents who immigrated from Guatemala. He has scholarships and financial aid to cover tuition, and gets some help from his parents. But it’s never been enough to cover his rent.
Adrian Aguilar:
I definitely need a job to afford housing here, which it does eat it into my time, but that’s just the reality of the situation.
Laura Barron-Lopez:
Last year, Aguilar paid about $1,000 a month for a room in an off-campus apartment that had no natural light in the common areas, but it was walking distance to campus.
This year, he’s on the southeast side of Austin, paying about $200 less each month. He says it’s far less depressing, but now getting to class is a 20-minute drive, followed by a more than 30-minute walk.
Adrian Aguilar:
And I’m lucky because my because the engineering center is the closest to the parking lots, so I can’t imagine somebody who has classes more south of campus.
Laura Barron-Lopez:
For more than a decade, Austin has been one of the fastest growing metro areas in the country. Though down from pandemic-level highs, average rents are still 20 percent higher than they were five years ago.
Jay Hartzell, President, The University of Texas at Austin: Back when I was in school, that one building, the Castilian, was the only one still here. And you could actually see all the hills.
Laura Barron-Lopez:
Jay Hartzell is the president of the University of Texas at Austin, and he acknowledges that housing is a major concern for students.
Jay Hartzell:
We are in some ways a huge beneficiary of the boom of Austin. We’re a part of that. But that growth has a cost. And we have seen prices go up.
Laura Barron-Lopez:
At the University of Texas, the cost of tuition has actually fallen 16 percent over the last five years. But like many four-year public universities across the country, the cost of room and board is now higher than tuition for in-state students.
Jay Hartzell:
Tuition is so observable. People see it on a Web site. They are comparison shopping, different universities to think about how much tuition is going to cost, but housing might be something they don’t discover until later.
Laura Barron-Lopez:
What do you think could alleviate some of the cost of housing?
Jay Hartzell:
I think, in some sense, as an economist, there’s no substitute for more supply.
Laura Barron-Lopez:
The university is building more housing. New graduate apartments are going up and a 1,000-bed dorm for undergraduates is replacing an older, smaller one.
But with less than 10,000 beds available for students on campus, the vast majority of U.T.’s 42,000 undergraduates are in Austin’s private housing market.
Namratha Thrikutam, College Student:
Generally, the thing that people are worried about is affordability.
Kayla Quilantang, College Student:
Developers know that students are a vulnerable population. And because of that, there’s a rise in rents every year.
Laura Barron-Lopez:
Namratha Thrikutam and Kayla Quilantang are both undergraduates in U.T.’s architecture program and two of the leaders of the university tenants union, which formed this past spring.
The group successfully lobbied Austin to ban windowless bedrooms and is now hoping to be a long-term resource for students navigating housing at U.T.
Do you think that the university has done enough?
Kayla Quilantang:
When there are students living in windowless bedrooms, when there are students that are living in conditions with mold or being forced to move out early and find an attorney or find the housing solutions themselves, it seems like there needs to be more of a responsibility taken on the university’s side.
Namratha Thrikutam:
There are affordable options. And I think that students get overwhelmed and they don’t know what to do. And they want to rely on their university, but we’re not being given enough resources.
Jay Hartzell:
We worry about our students’ outcomes and work fiercely on their behalf. But we also realize that we are in this big city with a lot of different kinds of providers of housing, and it’s going to be up to, in many ways, the city to figure out how to regulate all of that.
Laura Barron-Lopez:
The cost of housing in growing Austin is not unique. Nationally, nearly one in two students experience some form of housing insecurity, according to surveys from the Hope Center at Temple University.
Mark Huelsman, Temple University:
We see this housing crisis that exists across our country, but that’s rendered one in 12 students experiencing homelessness.
Laura Barron-Lopez:
Mark Huelsman’s is the center’s director of policy and advocacy.
Mark Huelsman:
Most students are not the 18-year-old coming straight from high school on to campus living on campus. Most students are commuter students. They’re working, sometimes full-time, while enrolled in college. And these students are often on their own, and they’re often on their own without the support of the federal government and without the support of sufficient financial aid.
Laura Barron-Lopez:
Pell Grants, which are the largest federal support for low-income college students, can be used for non-tuition expenses like housing, but Huelsman says those grants only cover so much.
Mark Huelsman:
The Pell Grants’ purchasing power covers less of the percentage of college costs than it ever has since its inception. So what that means is students are taking on greater debt. They’re working longer hours. They’re either putting themselves currently behind the eight ball financially or in the future through higher debt.
Jay Hartzell:
Twenty-five percent of our student body are Pell Grant-eligible.
Laura Barron-Lopez:
At U.T., President Jay Hartzell says the university has provided more financial support for student housing. In 2023, U.T. launched a new housing scholarship. This year, it’s providing up to $2,300 a year for more than 3,000 middle- and low-income students living on campus.
Jay Hartzell:
The goal is to use the aid as a tool to help students find it more affordable to live close to campus, because, in our experience, students that live closer do better.
Laura Barron-Lopez:
Junior Ashanty Meredith is one of those scholarship recipients. Originally from Dallas, the cost of housing at U.T. caught her by surprise.
Ashanty Meredith, College Student:
Nothing could have prepared me for how much I would have had to pay just for housing alone.
Laura Barron-Lopez:
Meredith is a chemistry major and an aspiring doctor who has lived on campus all three years. Even though financial aid covers her tuition and some of her housing, coming up with the balance meant taking out loans and getting a job.
But for the last two years, she’s gotten a financial boost from the university scholarship.
Ashanty Meredith:
I was ecstatic, because it really helped reduce the amount of loans I would have to take out to pay for my housing and it allowed me to just focus 100 percent of my time on just my academics and not having to worry what the next bill is due.
Laura Barron-Lopez:
Despite high rent, Meredith has no regrets about attending U.T., a sentiment echoed by senior Adrian Aguilar. But he says the cost of housing is weighing heavily on what he might do after graduation.
Adrian Aguilar:
Austin, it is a nice city, but I don’t really want to worry about losing another $1,000 a month every month minimum. Going back home and living with my parents is a very tempting idea.
Laura Barron-Lopez:
A decision driven by housing costs that could affect the vibrancy of Austin.
For the “PBS News Hour,” I’m Laura Barron-Lopez on the campus of U.T. Austin.