As More Students Turn to Community Colleges, More Community Colleges Build Dorms

A small but increasing number of community colleges offer their students an unexpected option — residence halls. And as an article in the Los Angeles Times notes, some of the accommodations are pretty sweet, with apartment-style units and amenities like game rooms, gyms, and swimming pools.

As the shriveling economy makes community colleges an appealing option for students who might normally apply to four-year institutions, community colleges that offer housing — including 11 in California alone — can attract undergraduates who plan to transfer to state universities after their first two years of college. But many of the two-year institutions that have residence halls built them for other reasons. Some community colleges serve such large regions that some students can’t easily commute from their homes, for instance.

Other two-year institutions, among them several in Los Angeles, have built residence halls in recent years because the institutions have become popular with international students — and they need housing. Community-college dorms have also sprung up in Texas, Minnesota, Florida, and Washington, according to the American Association of Community Colleges, which counts more than 300 member institutions that offer some kind of housing option. “We do think it’s a trend for more community colleges to provide residential housing for students,” says Norma G. Kent, the association’s vice president for communications.

Not everyone’s a fan of the idea, however. Robert E. Ritschel, president of Spoon River College, in Canton, Ill., warned in a Chronicle essay just last month that residence halls bring problems that many institutions might prefer to avoid, among them students who use drugs and parents who can’t stop calling with complaints. “Any president who believes that building dorms sounds like a great idea,” Mr. Ritschel wrote, “needs to talk to those of us who have been there and done that.”