Several days ago, I read an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal about the rapid growth in private housing for college students. Positioned as an alternative to living in campus residence halls, these apartments offer all sorts of amenities and fringe benefits to the students, as they partner with promotional firms to offer everything from concert tickets to Uber rides.
Later that same day I came across a job listing for a “Violence Prevention Educator/Deputy Title IX Coordinator” at Ursinus College, where I used to teach. Among the essential duties of this new position is to “provide campus-wide programs on topics such as sexual misconduct, alcohol and drugs, hazing, violence prevention, and conflict resolution”.
I understand why Ursinus feels the need to have this position, and it mirrors similar efforts at countless colleges across the country. The schools are playing defense in the area of student conduct, and trying their best to prevent incidents of misconduct, which seem to be reported in the news almost daily.
But let’s think about this for a minute. Do colleges really need to instruct young men and women to not be violent, to not assault anybody sexually, and to not abuse drugs and alcohol? Is this really why colleges exist? Or do they exist to educate young men and women in the arts and sciences, and to prepare them for life ahead? After all, these are adults, not children.
Perhaps colleges need to take a hard look at their essential function, and aggressively outsource student living to contract providers off campus. Let the contractors (and the law) deal with student misbehavior. The colleges can eliminate huge swaths of administrative personnel in the Dean of Students and Safety departments, convert existing on-campus residence halls to other needed uses. The students would then come to campus to attend classes, do research, eat in the dining hall, participate in extracurricular activities — and then go home to their off-campus, privately owned and managed housing. That’s where almost all the trouble occurs, so why should colleges have to deal with it?
Meaningful reductions in college costs will require aggressive thinking, and schools need to consider bold options like this.