Rachel Morgan

Ms. Grant
UWRT1103
10 October 2014
Is Commuting or Living on Campus Better for Students Retention?
I have decided that I am going to go a little deeper into the issue of being close to home. I am
going to focus on the benefits of being a student that lives on campus versus a commuter student. I
believe that campus involvement helps a student remain motivated to do well in their classes because
they do not have to worry about as many distractions. It is hard to maintain a full time job and have less
time to study and be able to commute as well as focus on studying than do students that live on
campus.
In Alexander Astins Student Involvement: A developmental theory for higher education, he
states that student involvement is key to success in learning and staying interested in learning subjects.
On page 523, he states that there is a positive relation between living on campus and retention rates.
Students that are involved in campus organizations are less likely to become college dropouts than are
commuter students. It is also said that having a part- time job on campus helps to reinforce retention
opposed to the assumption that it would take time away from the students ability to study. This is due
to the students access to other students and professors that they may come in contact with by
spending so much time on campus. The students will also form a stronger attachment with the school
through how many hours they spend on campus. On page 524, Astin says that students working off
campus at a full-time job have quite the opposite experience of those students working on campus.
Students working off campus do not have near as many opportunities to from connections with other
students and their professors or to form an attachment with their school.
In the University of California, Irvines paper, The Impact of Living On or Off Campus in the
Freshman Year, it is stated that students that live on campus versus those that commute typically were
similar in gender, ethnicity and had the same types of goals for college, similar SAT scores, quarterly
GPAs and self-reported academic gains. However, they were different in several major ways, such as,
commuter students tended to be first generation college students and come from a low income
household. Commuter students typically had a job off campus to help pay for school or to help their
families, whereas, residential students typically had on-campus jobs and were more likely to be engaged
with other students outside of class. However, commuter students reported using the library for
studying and were less likely to skip class. This research showed that overall, residential students had a
better involvement and were shown to be more persistent to make it to the next year of college.
In Laura J. Horns and Jennifer Berktolds, Commuter Students- Commuter Student Challenges,
commuter students were found to have lower retention rates than residential students. An article by
Victor Tinto from 1987 referenced by this article states that students that have a higher interaction with
their universities academic and social systems are more likely to work harder to make it to that next
year of college. Because commuter students do not have as many opportunities to make connections as
do residential students, they are at a higher risk for dropping out and make less of a commitment to the
school itself.

In Ray Gasser, Ph.D.s, White Paper: Educational and Retention Benefits of Residential Hall Living
(2008), studies showed that GPAs were in fact higher in residential students than commuter students,
as were retention and matriculation rates as well. Students that live on campus are more likely to have
higher grade point averages and greater scores on standardized tests than commuter students. Livinglearning communities are also found to be a great way for students to tie together academics and living
with the opportunity to participate in out-of-class activities that create greater interaction between
faculty and students. Current research shows positive effects of living- learning communities and their
impact on student learning as well as effects from faculty-student interaction (Schroeder and Berry,
1997).
In B. Lauren Youngs, Commuter and Residential Students: Attitudes, Expectations, And Their
Influences on Integration and Persistence, it is stated that students who lived on or near campus have a
better persistence to obtaining a degree than do students that are commuters. Commuters are more
likely to have roles outside of school that would prevent them from becoming as involved in the campus
as residential students as well as preventing them from focusing solely on academics when at home.
Students who were commuters were more likely to persist in college due in part to a parents wish or
the desire to make more money, as opposed to those who decided to attend a college due to the low
tuition rate. Commuters typically did not think that general education classes were important and
therefore rarely pursued a six year degree.