Cost, space issues burden graduate student housing

It was a “nerve-wracking” experience, she said. The Housing Department did eventually grant her and her husband permission to retain their apartment for the next year despite the scarcity of available units. Though the process “was very time consuming,” Ochs said, she was glad that she and her family could stay.

Though the details of Ochs’ situation may be unique, many graduate students suffer from the University’s inability to guarantee housing for everyone. Despite the University’s efforts to improve housing for graduate students, severe housing crunches continue to affect the quality of life of already-stressed graduate students.

Currently, roughly 70 percent of Princeton’s graduate students live in University housing, but there are many students who live off campus involuntarily. As the implementation of the Housing Master Plan — part of the 10-year Campus Plan — gets underway, graduate students fear that coveted on-campus living arrangements will become even scarcer.

Officials from the Housing Department and the Graduate School noted, however, that the University is able to accommodate almost all graduate students who apply to live in on-campus housing.

“Every year there are a certain amount of students who are unsuccessful in the Draw process,” they said in an e-mail. “Although an offer of housing cannot be guaranteed to all who are on the wait list, most years we are able to offer to everyone typically in mid to late summer.”

Housing and Graduate School officials noted that the campus residence rate is “higher than graduate student housing provided at peer institutions.” Even while construction scheduled in the Housing Master Plan begins, the same percentage of students will be able to find on-campus housing, they said.

Waitlisted students who are eventually offered housing, however, often end up living off campus, Graduate Student Government (GSG) Facilities Committee chair Jeff Dwoskin GS noted.

“Many people don’t even wait for the waitlist at all,” he said.

“It’s nice that [the Housing Department is] eventually able to make an offer to most people,” Dwoskin added, “[but] it doesn’t mean that there is no demand for more on-campus housing.”

The room-draw process

Graduate room draw gives priority to those in their first years of study, with guaranteed housing for incoming first-year students who submit their paperwork on time. First- and second-year graduate students also have the option of retaining their housing.

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As students progress through their years of graduate study, their University housing situation becomes more tenuous, and many are forced to look off campus.

“It seems like the housing situation is getting tighter and tighter,” said Graduate College House Committee chair Richard Chiburis GS, a fourth-year economics student, noting that many of his friends were unable to find on-campus housing for the 2008-09 academic year.

“When we’re asked whether we have guaranteed housing ... the answer is going to be that fourth year, you’re going to have to move off campus,” Dwoskin said, adding that the changing availability of housing may affect the information that current students convey to prospective applicants.

“In the past couple of years, it would have been easier for students going into the fifth year to find housing,” Chiburis said, citing an increase in the number of graduate students and in the length of time graduate students take to complete their Ph.D.s as likely reasons for the crunch.

Meghan Gottschall GS, who will be going into her fourth year in the French and Italian department, retained her Lawrence apartment this year.

“As I reach the third and fourth and fifth years, it’s making me a little nervous,” Gottschall said. While she anxiously and successfully drew into a double for next year, “my assumption is that I will probably not get housing my fifth year,” she said.

This can be problematic for students finishing their graduate theses, Dwoskin said. “It’s going to be one extra thing to do outside of your academic work.”

For those with financial or other personal hardships, however, the University does offer priority housing to ensure a better draw time. “Every year the [housing] committee reviews hardship applications from students for a broad range of issues that are considered on a case by case basis,” housing and graduate school officials said.

Yet the program only ensures that eligible students will draw early. There is no associated reduction in rent or increase in stipend.

In addition, not all of the leases to campus apartments end at the same time. This means that graduate students may be stuck in limbo for several weeks between the end of one lease and the beginning of another.

Priority housing is also given to graduate students active on residential committees. This was a major concern in the controversial Lawrence Committee elections in March, in which campaign posters implied that at least some candidates in the large pool vying for the coveted membership positions were only interested in receiving priority for housing.

Such incidents are “not a very good sign,” Lawrence resident and French and Italian graduate student Valerie Aguilar said. She added, however, that the housing privileges associated with membership on residential committees are not unwarranted.

“If people are going to take the time to do this out of their life and their schedule, I don’t think it’s a problem that they should get that perk,” she said.

Indirect costs of renovation

The Housing Master Plan will change the face of University graduate student apartments. Currently, graduate students have the option of living in the Graduate College, in one of the five University-owned apartment complexes or off campus.

The Butler apartment complex, which consists of barrack-style buildings constructed more than 60 years ago, “has far exceeded its life expectancy,” a University pamphlet describing the Campus Plan notes. Sean Long GS, a second-year geosciences student who lives in the Butler complex, said heating and noise issues related to poor insulation and thin walls are prevalent.

These apartments will be torn down and replaced, however, with higher-quality buildings to be allocated to faculty and staff. Graduate students who would have lived in Butler will instead receive rooms in the Stanworth, Hibben or Magie complexes.

Hibben and Magie will eventually be renovated, and some students will be relocated to Stanworth, which currently houses faculty and staff.

But the destruction of the Butler apartment complex may have severe financial repercussions for some graduate students.

“Butler right now, because of its conditions, has the least expensive housing,” Dwoskin said, “and many students, especially international students with spouses, take advantage of that.”

According to the University’s housing website, the rates for Butler apartments for next year will remain at just more than half the cost of a comparable apartment in Hibben or Magie, with a two-bedroom Hibben/Magie apartment costing around $1,450 per month, as opposed to $752 for a small Butler apartment. “It doesn’t make sense to provide substandard housing, but [cost] is an issue,” Dwoskin added.

The housing office said that rental costs will need to be evaluated following the changes in housing. She added that though the cost of rental units was raised a few years ago in conjunction with a rise in graduate student stipends, this was done merely to “move closer toward market values in the area.”

The University remains committed to housing 70 percent of its graduate students.

“The Housing Master Plan responds to planned growth at the Graduate School,” housing and Graduate School officials explained. “We will continue to work with the Graduate School to ensure that the program meets student needs.”

Help from the University

One way the University is attempting to meet these student needs is to ease the transition from University housing to residences off campus.

The University has recently created the position of Housing Services Manager, whose role is to “better connect members of our University community with rental housing resources in the local market,” housing and Graduate School officials explained.

The University has been negotiating with landlords to help students with no credit history or who may not require full-year leases, Dwoskin said. It has has also expanded its off-campus housing website, which allows faculty, staff and students to search for local housing options.

When Graduate School Dean William Russell addressed housing concerns at the April 9 assembly of the GSG, he “seemed to recognize” the consequences of the Campus Plan, Dwoskin noted, adding, “but they’ve worked very hard to at least make sure that graduate housing remained stable when there could have been a loss to replace Butler Apartments,” Dwoskin noted.

On or off?

Even with the expected rent increase as a result of the renovation and reallocation of the Butler Apartments, however, on-campus housing remains the most attractive option for many graduate students.

“The biggest benefit by far [of living on campus] is the cost. It’s much, much cheaper than you could ever get for an apartment in Princeton,” Long said.

Ochs noted that the limited stipends received by graduate students, especially those pursuing degrees in the humanities, necessitate finding as affordable housing as possible. She noted that rent for a Lawrence apartment during her fourth year took up about three-quarters of her stipend.

“If my husband didn’t have a job, it all financially would have been a bit too much,” she said. “I wouldn’t have been able to afford [an apartment] on my stipend.”

Living on campus also comes with the convenience of dealing directly with the University when problems arise.

Aguilar chose to live in Lawrence for her second year rather than find an apartment off campus for this added benefit.

“I wanted to just deal with the University because they’re a lot more accommodating [than landlords],” she said. “If anything breaks, the University has a website, and I just submit a form online and they come.” The University is committed to no-cost repairs. “If you live off campus and something breaks, you have to deal with it on your own, and you have to deal with landlords,” she said.

Dwoskin also noted that having to commute to campus “separates those students from the rest of the campus community.” Because of the increased distance and inconvenience, graduate students are less able to take advantage of social events, attend lectures and help undergraduates in their precepts, he said.

Still an attraction

Despite a number of concerns, housing was not a significant factor for many graduate students when choosing between Princeton and other institutions.

“Princeton’s programs are very prestigious on many levels because of the faculty that you can work with and the funding that you can get,” Aguilar said. “There are so many other factors that [are] higher on people’s priorities.”

Princeton’s housing options, though, were a small but positive influence on Chiburis’ decision to study at Princeton.

“I think the graduate college is pretty unique as far as grad housing goes across any university, to be able to have a dorm with a dining hall and a have a bar in the basement right where you live,” Chiburis noted.

There is no such option at Harvard, which has no graduate student dormitories and offers no guaranteed housing. Instead, its housing office helps students find housing in properties affiliated with the university or nearby apartments. Yale, however, gives continued-housing privileges to students already living in on-campus residences, which consist of both dormitories and apartments.