Tracey Mason-Innes is the Executive Director of Student Affairs at Simon Fraser University. For more than 27 years, she has worked in a variety of post-secondary institutions in Canada to reduce barriers and improve systems to increase student access and help students achieve their goals.
Let’s start with the obvious issue. The headlines are rife with how difficult the housing landscape is for international students and communities. What kind of position does that put Canadian institutions in?
It certainly affects all of Canada’s institutions – and I think it's very interesting to look at the slight differences in how each province has handled student housing. You've seen some provinces really step up. For example, British Columbia, for a few years now, has had an accessible loan and grant program that aims to add 8,000 new on-campus student beds to be built by 2028.
Early on, they identified that this kind of funding provides an opportunity to really address the stresses on housing in the community – that if schools could build more student housing, then we would take the pressure off of housing in the community. Since then, they've been able to produce quite a few beds across the province.
We know just how fortunate we've been at SFU to have started a Housing Master Plan back when we did in 2014. It wasn't like the residences were full or anything, but rather people had the initiative to try and get a sense of our student housing demand and to re-imagine student housing at SFU.
To get started, we really had to reacquaint ourselves with the purpose of having student housing. It's not really meant to be just a roof or a bedroom, right? It’s much more than that. We've seen the impacts of good support and resources within student housing facilities and what it can do to help students adjust and achieve their academic successes. Student housing has to be built and operated with purpose in order to support students properly.
As we initiated SFU’s housing plan, it was the first time I really understood what some of the challenges and barriers were.
And what is the biggest obstacle for getting a student housing project going? Where do you think the initiative gets roadblocked and/or kicked down the road?
Well, you certainly need to be able to borrow, partner, or have money. But crucially, you need to have the will to actually get a project off the ground.
Ultimately, every institution is going to have their own unique challenge. It could be cultivating a sense of will, it could be that they lack expertise or simply knowing where to start – although I would say there are some really good folks out there such as CRI that are there to help when it comes to starting to explore the data and help guide the planning and gauge exactly what kind of demand you’re dealing with.
I do think there are many options and models to make these projects happen – it just comes back to cultivating the political and social will to do this. It takes partnerships and clear roles within those partnerships. Some institutions have been able to find partners who take on the role of developer, funder, operator and planner. Some have the ability to fill those roles within the institution.
“We have research that says international students actually benefit academically from on-campus housing even more than domestic students. “
So, you were talking about a proactive approach and kindling that sort of motivation internally. Tell us about what kind of value that generates for institutions and students – beyond just avoiding the negative scenario we see now.
Well, it's exciting, especially for institutions such as ours (commuter campuses), how much student housing changes the campus in a positive way.
It’s much more dynamic and energized. Students don’t have to make their way to the campus in order to create that kind of atmosphere – it’s happening naturally because they're already living there. Everyone's on campus. We’ve done studies that show how living on campus can positively impact students' grades and the way that they engage.
The last survey we did, students were telling us how living on campus made all the difference in the world for making connections and everything that comes with that.
When you have folks studying together, eating together, struggling together and succeeding, that’s the magic. It’s relatively effortless to create, it happens naturally, and it's an undeniably special, positive effect.
We also see that with international students. We have research that says international students actually benefit academically from on-campus housing even more than domestic students. Especially when we’re talking about the options available to them these days – having to worry about having a roof over their head instead of having a community to grow with – you’re going to see that differential show up in their grades.
And of course, for institutions, taking that proactive path has benefits beyond student success. It brings up revenues for dining, it makes for a more attractive campus. It's just healthier; we all recently got to see what it’s like when there's no one on campus.
“Students are making choices on whether to attend or stay in a school based on housing availability and affordability. I think in the end, an institution needs to ensure that they are thinking strategically about how much housing, what type of housing, for who, etc.”
When it comes to planning, tell us a bit about the role of gathering and analyzing data. How pivotal is that?
It’s super important. It’s the difference between best-guesswork and having confidence in what you can expect. And having preliminary data helps to address the quantitative questions that people have as the project gets launched. So, in our case, it was important to demonstrate the residence demand.
And even then, the results can be surprising. Some of our people couldn’t believe the demand we had back in 2015, but the data showed it clearly. And our master plan didn't just look at demand, it helped forecast what types of housing we needed and what the threshold of rental rates would be for students.
So for me, it's important to have that data to help focus a very emotional topic. It speaks to the people that are accountable for the funding and it's just wise to be able to demonstrate the need and ensure that it's going to be a good investment when it comes to spending public money.
But right now, we can't build fast enough.
Finally, any advice for schools that are looking to align their resident strategies with their enrollment goals?
We clearly can see how student housing links to enrollment and institutional goals.
Students are making choices on whether to attend or stay in a school based on housing availability and affordability. I think in the end, an institution needs to ensure that they are thinking strategically about how much housing, what type of housing, for who, etc.
Then there’s some very important areas to consider: are students going to have a meal plan? Then, what are your menus, dining services hours and all of those details? How are they going to do laundry? Where will they park? What are the active hours for your campus security? Because now activity extends past 4pm.
Planning for those issues is the nature of the game. But some people would be surprised to know that there is a body of research and professional associations that focus on student housing. So my advice is just to turn to folks that have that experience. There's no need to reinvent the wheel.