Facing a critical fall dorm shortage after more freshmen chose to enroll at the University of Georgia this year, the popular Athens campus is attempting to entice area teens from the Athens area to live at home. UGA is offering them $1,000 to give up their dorm rooms.
“The increase is due in part to the rising popularity of the University of Georgia among prospective students,” said UGA spokesman Greg Trevor. “University housing has offered a $1,000 incentive for incoming first-year students from Clarke and contiguous counties to waive the university’s requirement that they live on campus their first year.”
That is not the only deal. UGA is offering a $3,500 housing discount fee for non-first-year students who agree to live in Brown Hall, which is on the Health Science Campus off Prince Avenue and two miles from the main campus. Non-first-year students willing to forgo their on-campus housing contracts and live off campus will get $3,500 cash, said Trevor.
Both the $1,000 and the $3,500 incentives are being offered on a first-come, first-serve basis. The Board of Regents said last week UGA is the only public campus facing oversubscribed student housing and offering cash to prod kids to live elsewhere.
Third-year UGA student Justin Ebert, 20, accepted the $3,500 to move from campus; he is renting an apartment near campus this fall. Ebert believes he’ll save about $450 a month. His first incentive offer from UGA on May 12 was for $2,500, but the university quickly upped it to $3,500.
“I was super happy,” he said. “This is the only time the university would give me money.”
Ebert believes UGA’s problem stems, in part, from having less dorm space with the closing of Russell Hall for renovation. The high-rise on Baxter Street housed 970 freshmen in double-occupancy rooms. With a total undergraduate enrollment of 27,500 students, UGA welcomed 5,475 first-year students last year.
Trevor said the housing shortage may owe in part to a challenge facing many campuses nationwide: double deposits. Students enroll and pay non-refundable tuition and housing deposits to more than one institution by the May 1 deadline, putting off their final decision until later in the summer. At that point, they forgo those deposits, but it is a cost more students — and their parents — are apparently willing to pay for their indecision.
In 2016, UGA received 248 deposits from prospective first-year students who eventually did not enroll, the highest number in at least five years. Experts said double deposits aren’t illegal, but it’s unethical and can cause confusion for colleges in estimating how many dorm rooms they’ll need.
“Students and parents are trying to make sure they are in good shape, so they’re doing something they’re not supposed to do,” said Nancy Beane, associate director of college counseling at the Westminster Schools in Buckhead and president of the National Association of College Admission Counseling.
Whether that summer melt — double-enrolled freshmen who go elsewhere — will alleviate the UGA housing shortage is not clear yet. “It is too early to speculate on the specific impact of any additional summer melt. What we can tell you is that we are making every effort to accommodate first-year students who want to live on campus,” said Trevor.
Some parents discovered the housing crunch while at UGA last week for orientation. During a tour of an apartment dorm in UGA’s East Campus Village, parents and students learned the single bedrooms they expected would now house two students with the addition of bunk beds. Two-person apartments are being expanded to four students.
Parents will see a slight decrease in their housing tab from what UGA describes as “expanded” rooms. For example, a two-bedroom apartment in Vandiver Hall drops from $3,707 for two students per semester to $3,466 for four students, a discount of $241, said Trevor.
During one tour, parents were told the freshmen class was larger than expected by about a thousand students, but Trevor said, “Although final enrollment numbers will not be available until the beginning of the fall semester, the increase in the number of enrolled first-year students will be nowhere close to 1,000 – in fact, it will be less than half that figure.”
UGA students are reporting that resident advisers — commonly called RAs — are being assigned roommates in oversubscribed dorms, something rarely done in the past. However, Trevor said, “When RAs sign their agreement, the agreement states that there is a possibility that RAs might have roommates.”
Like many colleges, UGA requires first-year students to live on campus, although it has allowed exemptions in the past for students living with parents in nearby Clarke, Barrow, Jackson, Madison, Oglethorpe and Oconee. However, those exemptions did not come with cash incentives.
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