The roles student housing can play for a university

Cam Bestwick
Aug 1, 2025
10 min read

Updated: Apr 22

In an earlier piece Why Would a University Provide Housing? I was challenged to answer to a deceptively simple question: 'what’s the point of university housing?' with the added qualifier 'why not put the effort and resources into something else instead?'

In that piece, I concluded that, while there are many contributing factors, they largely sit beneath just three overarching reasons that make student housing worthwhile for a university:

Housing helps students solve painful problems and grow throughout their education journey.
Housing improves return on invested capital and generates positive cash flows.
Housing creates conditions that enable the institution to self-strengthen and grow.

I had always intended to return to this list and explore the longer list of reasons but, until recently, I lacked a strong enough catalyst to do so.

Since then, my vantage point has shifted. I’ve moved from leading housing functions within a small number of universities (supplemented by insights from networks and research), to working more directly with a wider range of institutions as a consultant and thought partner. That shift has granted me a clearer view of the different ways universities appraise their housing, including which are common, which are rare, and how heavily each is weighted.

That led me to notice a pattern: align or atrophy. If the main actors within an institution cannot reach a shared understanding of the roles their housing system is performing, it becomes ineffective — and usually in ways that spread beyond the housing function itself.

Why is reaching clarity of roles so important?

Let's consider the opposite first:

When an institution lacks clarity about why it has student housing, it is not because its reasons are absent — the financial and strategic stakes are too high for that. Rather, it is because the reasons are being contested.

A contest of ideas is certainly not a problem. In fact, it is productive — but only when it is conducted fairly and ultimately resolved.

A horror scenario — and not an uncommon one — is when different groups within a university attempt to establish their view as the institutional position through operations rather than through dialogue and debate.

This creates a special form of dysfunction where people who belong to the same organisation begin avoiding teamwork and compete at ways to undermine one another, with the implicit aim of forcing senior decision-makers to resolve the situation by backing one side over the other.

It is an unproductive state, but a surprisingly durable one! In some cases, it persists for many years.

An unstable purpose comes with huge costs, many of them hidden. The most disappointing one is that is almost precludes genuine excellence. Interpreting changes in students or the broader environment becomes harder, and responding effectively becomes harder still, because attention is consumed by internal battles. Landing new priorities is absurdly difficult when sub-groups will only agree to new priorities that don’t threaten their position, and their cooperation becomes conditional. Even the notion of being “student-centric” can become a label to be claimed and contested as part of the manoeuvring, rather than a shared mindset.

In this environment, progress is constrained — by alignment, not raw capability — and the lack of progress turns to atrophy as the world moves on.

By contrast, those universities that are at the cutting edge of excellence tend to be very clear on why they provide housing, and how it strengthens their institution. They have also considered the trade-offs that come with a multi-goal service and reached a working level of alignment on where their institution stands.

This piece is an attempt to help institutions reach that point faster.

What is this list of roles and why does it help?

So, after being on both sides of these alignment conversations, where I have been prodded and doing the prodding on the reasons for housing, I set out to define a set of 'roles' that housing can play for a university.

The list that follows reflects the most common and compelling ways I have seen housing and residential education contribute to institutional success.

This list is a tool. It is setting a menu, not a mandate, because is highly unlikely that one university housing system could do all these roles well. Even if it could, attempting them all would make prioritisation extremely complex.

its purpose is to help institutions reach agreement on their reasons more quickly. By laying out the full range of roles in one place, it becomes possible to move more directly into focused discussions and decision-making. In doing so, institutions can reach a stable position on priorities and avoid drifting into an unproductive pattern of debating these questions through operations.

Importantly, these are not framed as reasons a student should choose to live in housing. That's well documented elsewhere. These are framed from the institution’s perspective i.e. how is a university made better by it? To keep that lens clear, I have nested the roles within the three overarching reasons for housing outlined in my original piece.

Roles that help students to solve painful problems and grow throughout their education journey.

An enabler of student recruitment

For institutions that rely on attracting students from beyond their local population catchment, student relocation is not a fringe issue, it is a critical barrier to enrolment that must be overcome.

And where the existing residential market cannot reliably meet students’ needs, universities may choose to step in as a provider, aggregator, or broker of suitable options to reduce the frictions and risks students face when moving away for their studies.

The more effectively they do this, the more they reduce the downside of relocation. At first, this neutralises the impact of moving from a deterrent into a manageable part of the experience.

The living situations created by a university's interventions is outstanding, it can make relocating an attraction and a selling point for a university.

An expander of access to education

Having control of at least some suitable residential experiences that can be provided to students makes it possible to materially widen participation (i.e. increase the diversity of the student body) by making study feasible for students who would otherwise be excluded by the need to relocate.

Of course, are many ways that a deserving student could be prevented from effectively joining or succeeding at a university due to circumstances beyond their control, and suitable housing doesn't neutralise all of them. But, by providing suitable housing options, barriers like distance, cost, disabilities, culture shock (and many more), can be overcome.

This one is not all about addressing the issue of market failures and cost issues. When a university gets control, or at least strong influence, over the kind of home environment that can be provided to a student during study, it gains more channels and mechanisms through which to deliver support that helps students overcome barriers. This broadens the barriers that can be addressed to a much wider range.

Housing is not a silver bullet in widening access to (increasing diversity within) higher education, but it does seem pivotal. Without any viable housing options, many access efforts are significantly constrained.

A pivotal factor in students' capacity to engage

Where students live has an outsized influence on how they experience university.

A stable, safe, and supportive home environment enables students to engage well on all fronts: academically, socially, and personally.

The opposite undermines your educational experience completely. It is difficult — if not impossible — to participate meaningfully in university life if a student is dealing with instability, isolation, exploitative landlords, poverty, hunger or other poor living conditions.

Universities cannot not control every student’s circumstances, and it's foolish to expect they should. But even if it is not their fault, it is still their problem. If they want students to have a great experience, they have to content with the blockers to that, or it won't be great.

This is of critical importance for those universities located in major economic centres where students cannot live on a reasonable estimate of it's possible to earn, part-time, outside the firm time commitments of their studies.

A scaffolded transition to university

Residential environments can provide a structured and supportive transition into university life.

Done well, this provides students with acceptance, routine, immersion, proximity to peers, and easy access to both formal and informal guidance from those who have already navigated similar transitions.

All of this creates a sturdy base from which students can build confidence, relationships, and identity. They are safe enough to explore.

For some cohorts whose first year transition might be more challenging (for example: first-in-family or international students), this level support is not just helpful, but can be decisive in whether they adjust, persist and succeed.

A lever to address loneliness and belonging

New!

Loneliness is a defining challenge for many students today, and it has clear academic and personal consequences. University has long been a social and personal development rite of passage. And the parents and other advisors of young people often emphasise and even romanticise this aspect of university.

Housing can be one of the most effective levers to address it.

The real value of university housing is not just shelter, but connection. Well-designed and well-managed communities create environments where students are known, supported, and able to form meaningful relationships. Oftentimes, this is where people form their strongest lifelong friendships.

A low-floor, high-ceiling pathway to high engaged students

Residential communities create low-risk, low-barrier entry points for students to get involved.

Students are far more likely to try new activities in familiar, lower-stakes environments — whether that’s the arts, entrepreneurship, leadership, sport, or social initiatives.

Early, small-scale participation builds confidence and momentum. As students take those first steps, they become more likely to engage more broadly across the university. Just as importantly, their participation signals to others that these activities are accessible and worth trying.

Over time, this creates a compounding effect where low-barrier opportunities within residences builds toward much deeper engagement, and leadership involvement, that spread positive effects through the whole university, lifting its vibrancy.

Roles that improve a university's return on invested capital and generate positive cash flows

A generator of reliable revenue and cash flow

Student housing can operate as a financially productive asset in its own right.

In many contexts, it is capable of generating consistent revenue, and in some cases, functioning as a profit centre.

Beyond the return on the initial capital investment, housing often produces steady, predictable cash flows — with fees typically collected in advance of the service delivery, driving positive cash flow.

This financial profile can provide stability and flexibility for institutions, supporting reinvestment in core activities and reducing reliance on more volatile income streams.

A highly productive use of land

Student housing can deliver strong returns relative to its physical footprint.

Compared to teaching, research, or administrative buildings — which often require large, contiguous floorplates — residential buildings can be designed to be taller, denser, and more space-efficient. This allows institutions to maximise yield per square metre, particularly on land-constrained or high-value sites.

In this sense, housing is not just a service or experience, but a strategic use of land and an opportunity to stengthen university balance sheets.

A means of growing the campus retail and night-time economy

Residences help activate the broader campus economy.

They provide a consistent population that supports the viability of certain services such as dining, sport, events, and retail — and particularly outside teaching hours.

In return, students gain easier access to these services, enhancing their overall experience.

A university without residents faces the challenge of underutilised infrastructure and daytime-only campus atmosphere. A university with them can function more like a smal city with more connected, self-sustaining services in close proximity.

Roles that enable the institution to self-strengthen and grow

A differentiator in the competitive market for students

Housing can move beyond meeting a functional need to becoming a distinctive part of the institutional offering.

At the basic level, it may simply reduce the barriers associated with relocating, which is only a differentiator if nobody else is doing it. But at a more advanced level — when a university is host to a sophisticated, educationally charged, and distinctive housing system — it ceases to be an ancillary service for those students who already chose that university, and becomes an additional reason why they should choose it.

That, in turn, fills the housing system with students who really want to be there and get the most out of the experience, which injects yet more energy and life into it, and a virtuous cycle begins.

Moreover, the best differentiators are the hardest ones to replicate. Living-learning communities, abuzz with shared intellectual or professional interests, and cultures that students actively want to be part of, are hard to replicate!

A laboratory to pilot test new programs and services

Residential settings offer a 'captive audience' that is ideal for testing and piloting new ideas for programs and services, before scaling them up to the whole student body.

The residents in housing often resemble the demographics of the wider student body. They are somewhat easier to reach and invite into new experiences, because there will be well-established channels for getting them engaged in the existing hall services and programs. It's also easier to track their participation and obtain feedback.

All of this makes for very fertile ground to trial interesting programs, services, and delivery models at a smaller scale before expanding them more broadly. This reduces risk, accelerates learning, and allows for faster iteration.

In this sense, housing is not just a service or physical asset, it is a platform for innovation.

A hotbed of intellectual engagement

A hotbed of deep and cross-disciplinary engagement

Residences can become high-engagement environments that extend learning well beyond the classroom.

For many non-residential students, interaction is largely confined to their discipline or existing interests. In contrast, residential settings remove those structural boundaries. Everyday moments — like shared meals, time in common spaces, and regular events — create repeated, low-friction opportunities for students from different fields and backgrounds to interact.

With even light intentionality, this becomes powerful. Something as simple as a shared breakfast, with a guest speaker, or a small provocation can spark conversations that cut across disciplines and perspectives, creating a constant flow of informal knowledge exchange.

Some institutions formalise this through interdisciplinary, for-credit offerings within residences. But even without that, these environments naturally foster peer learning, leadership, and exposure to ideas and networks that would otherwise remain out of reach.

A builder of lifelong connection and advocacy

Where students live shapes how they remember their university experience. It is, after all, where they spent much of their discretionary time. It's striking how frequently alumni will reminisce about their dorm, house, hall and flatmates the most.

A positive residential experience deepens someone's emotional connection to the institution, strengthening alumni relationships, word-of-mouth, and philanthropic engagement over time.

A life-changing experience makes them a lifelong advocate.

A contributor to social licence and community integration

Student housing can help position the university as an active and visible part of its surrounding community.

By integrating students into local areas — and designing housing that engages with, rather than isolates them from, their surrounding towns and cities — institutions can strengthen relationships with the wider communities, states and nations that host them, and reinforce their social value.

Done well, this boosts their reputation, engenders support, insulates them from unfavourable public policies, and preserves their long-term sustainability.

Conclusion

Over to you to decide what matters most

As I mentioned at the outset, this list is not a prescription. It's a tool to help institutions reach clarity faster.

The goal is not to adopt all these roles, nor any of them in equal measure.

It’s a way to accelerate the process of putting many potential roles on the table and decide which ones matter the most, align around those, and moving forward with intent.

If your institution is starting or holding these critical conversations, having the right structure and experience in the room makes a significant difference. If it would help your institution to have me involved in your discussions and help you reach a clearer position, please do get in touch.