By Larry B. Dendy
ldendy@uga.edu
Living in a campus residence hall doesn’t guarantee a student better grades, but evidence  suggests it helps.
For the 14th consecutive academic term, undergraduate students living in residence halls have posted higher grade point averages than students living off campus. More than six times as many on-campus new freshmen earned a perfect 4.0 GPA as their off-campus counterparts.
For fall semester 2000, the average GPA for all residence-hall students was 3.04, compared to 3.0 for all undergraduates. For freshmen, the averages were 2.95 for those living in residence halls versus 2.91 for all others.
Those scores continue a trend that began fall quarter of 1995, when the UGA housing department began tracking grades of on- and off-campus undergraduates. In that term, the on-campus average GPA for all students was 2.83 and the off-campus score was 2.81. Off-campus students have never topped the on-campus average.
A total of 279 housing freshmen earned a perfect 4.0 GPA last fall, compared to only 43 freshmen living off campus. The totals included 190 women and 89 men who lived on campus, and 25 women and 18 men who didn’t.
“There appears to be a clear benefit to living on campus as far as grades go,” says Jim Day, housing director.
About 6,000 students—nearly a fifth of UGA’s total student body of 31,288—live in campus residence halls. About two-thirds of campus residents are freshmen.
Day says the academic advantage of campus living seems to be especially strong for freshmen. The 3,240 on-campus freshmen last fall had a 3.07 GPA. That bested the 2.99 average for the 573 freshmen who lived elsewhere, and also topped the 3.06 GPA for the entire undergraduate student body.
Why do on-campus residents seem to do better academically? Evidence is mainly anecdotal because there’s been little hard research on the question, Day says. But he has some theories.
“Residence hall students don’t commute, so they don’t spend time driving and hunting parking spaces,” Day says. “Most are on a meal plan, so they don’t have to shop and cook and clean up. If they work on campus, they’re closer to their jobs.
“They’re more a part of the learning enterprise,” he adds. “They live with other students, which motivates them to study. They’re closer to the library. They’re more likely to take part in campus activities and be more involved in campus life.”
Some off-campus students “seem to come to college more for the collegiate experience than the academic experience, and aren’t as motivated academically,” Day says. Perhaps as a result, students living in residence halls tend to stay in school and graduate at a higher rate than those living off campus, according to national studies.
UGA’s experience also seems to hold true at many other universities, Day says.
President Michael F. Adams is a strong advocate of the benefits of on-campus living for student success. One of the major goals of both UGA’s 10-year strategic plan and its recently completed self-study is building more residence halls.
For Day, that can’t happen soon enough.
“Every year our residence halls fill up and we have waiting lists,” he says. “Life on campus isn’t for everyone, but for many, it’s a very positive experience.” |
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