Ohio University Enrollment Plans

In June 2006, it was recommended to Ohio University to create a long-term enrollment plan that would create an expected schedule for undergraduate enrollment figures and demographics, rather than a year-by-year prediction. The documents pictured below come from the first few pages of Ohio University's 2006-2010 enrollment plan. These visual examples of O.U.'s enrollment (or, at least, as they pictured that enrollment in the future) as time goes by lets one see the difficulty students might have with finding an off-campus residence.

The enrollment plan foresaw Ohio's undergraduate enrollment in 2008 as 17,300. Actual numbers from the Princeton Review count O.U.'s enrollment at 1,759, which is over 250 more than even the university had expected. A small difference, maybe, but when many off-campus residences house between two and six people, it is significant enough. Just over 7,500 students live in residence halls at Ohio University, leaving around 1,000 to find homes off campus.

Click on each image to read the document. The original files can be found here.




[Added 3/4/09 for further clarification and further explanation] These documents came to being as a result of the Vision Ohio Resources Subcommittee. As mentioned above, this organization suggested that Ohio predict its future enrollment for two different reasons: first, so that the university could plan to have appropriate resources necessary for the increasing enrollment; and second, so that it would have an idea of the number of graduate students, rather than simply incoming freshmen. For the purposes of this blog, those graduate numbers are more important than the freshman numbers. Many, if not most or all, grad students will not be living in run-down apartments and houses on Palmer or Congress that many juniors and seniors are actually seeking out. They won't compete directly for the same properties, but the finite amount of properties around campus to choose from are still being diminished.

If you look at the numbers on the fourth document listed, you will see the numbers for graduate students, as well as transfers, freshmen and other undergrad numbers. If you were to divide the segments in the document further into "likely to live off campus" and "not likely to live off campus," you would end up with the freshmen in the latter group (and perhaps some of the "other new," and transfers and graduate students in the former. Out of all the figures on the sheet, "other new" and freshmen were the only ones that were over-allotted (-84 and -65, respectively). The others, graduate students and transfers, were both predicted too low (+54 and +65, respectively). As a result, since the purpose of these predictions was to make sure that the university would have enough resources for the influx of new students, a situation is created where Ohio University has over-prepared itself in terms of resources while off-campus living is under-prepared. That's an extra 119 graduate and transfer students that are likely to live off campus that the university was not prepared for. That has no effect on O.U., but it definitely creates some problems with limited off-campus housing.

Welcome

Despite the multitude of property owners in Athens, many students find open housing a bit scarce.
Ohio University has never been considered the easiest place to find a place to live outside of the dorms. Once students have met the university's required two-year time frame in residential housing, many choose to get out and off campus. With around 45 options of rental companies to choose from, it may seem to O.U. students that choices are limitless. But with an undergraduate enrollment of just over 17,500, the properties that those 45 landowners offer often can become inadequate.

This blog will take a look at the issue of student housing in Athens from various viewpoints, from students who live in different properties with different experiences and different landlords to the landlords themselves, who make it all happen. At its core, this site is created as a placement for research found on housing at Ohio University--research that involves not only facts and figures but commentary and testimonials from the people who are affected firsthand, and research done by a fellow student who has seen these effects firsthand. It's not all serious, not all humorous, but a blend. If you've ever been to Athens, Ohio, you know that it has to be.