Oakland University has a solution to its dorm problem: Community College students

On By Littum

Rochester – Travion Harten was headed toward a career in the trades while attending Henry Ford High School in Detroit. But when the program didn’t work out, he decided to enroll at Oakland Community College in Auburn Hills and learned from a friend that he could even live on campus at nearby Oakland University.

Harten is now among 40 OCC students who are part of a pilot program at OU believed to be the first university in Michigan to welcome community college students to live on campus.

Oakland University officials said it makes sense to expand its many partnerships with Oakland County and offer OCC students the chance to experience campus life that could potentially lead them to move to Oakland and earn a four-year degree. Offering the option to Macomb Community College students is also on the horizon.

The strategy also helps OU fill vacancies in the residence halls, whose occupancy is still down 25% nearly five years after state universities had to send students home amid the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020.

OU decided to take advantage of the available occupancy and create a partnership with OCC, which may be among the few in the country to offer a housing arrangement for community college students at a four-year university, said Glenn McIntosh, OU senior vice president for student affairs and head of diversity.

“Students will choose to go to a two-year school for a variety of reasons, but they want the full college experience, campus life, student activities, student organizations, campus recreation center, Division 1 level sporting events, so this gives the students at OCC that opportunity to have that kind of access and experience,” McIntosh said. “We think it’s a win-win for both schools.”

OCC students are excited about the partnership and have had a wonderful experience at OU, said Kimberly Hurns, OCC vice chancellor for student services.

“They have been very graciously welcomed by the residence hall staff and the campus in general,” Hurns said. “They’ve been doing social things like being part of campus, participating in activities and going to events. They’re very happy with the experience.”

For Harten, 18, the opportunity to live in an OU dorm has been “fantastic,” especially since his prospects were limited when the high school’s business program didn’t work out. He hadn’t applied to any colleges and all his friends were getting ready to go off to college and leave him behind. But that changed when he applied to OCC, landed Michigan Achievement and Detroit Promise scholarships to help pay for his tuition and found out about the chance to apply to live on OU’s campus.

Now, Harten lives without a roommate in Van Wagoner House, an OU residence hall, while taking a bus to OCC for his criminal justice classes. After returning to his dorm room, he studies, hangs out on the Rochester campus, and spends time with his best friend since seventh grade and girlfriend, who attends OU and lives in Hamlin Hall.

“I’m just blessed to be able to have the experience of living college life while attending community college because most students don’t even get this,” Harten said.

How the OCC pilot project was born

The COVID-19 pandemic was a pivotal time for housing on OU’s campus.

Before the pandemic, the university had 3,000 beds in six residence halls, two apartment complexes and an off-campus summer house where students could live on campus, said Robert King, OU’s senior director of housing. Today, the 200-bed Hill House is not being used, bringing available beds down to 2,800.

During the first months of the pandemic, OU responded, as many colleges did, by asking college students to return home. Even after taking measures to keep students safe in residents’ halls, occupancy dropped by more than 50% to 1,300 students in fall 2020.

Enrollment has grown since—to 1,800 students in 2021, over 1,900 students in 2022, and more than 2,000 students in 2023, and now 2,235 students, including the OCC pilot class.

University officials expect the number of OCC students to grow.

“We are still in our recovery area and this gives us an opportunity to connect and further enhance the community on campus by having more students,” King said.

Until the 2023 winter semester, OU students would still have to comply with COVID-related requirements to live in the residence halls, such as doing COVID tests, King said. The university was still operating COVID isolation rooms and other policies that may have contributed to the drop in occupancy, he said.

But after COVID, King added, “People just didn’t come back.”

Then university officials came up with the OCC idea, and King looked to a few other schools across the country as a model. OCC is already a pipeline for OU with one of the highest numbers of transfer students, King said. Additionally, OU is a fairly closed, safe campus, and the SMART bus system provides a direct transportation line between the university and OCC, he said.

Interest exceeds expectations

At first, Oakland University considered offering space to 15-20 students. But close to 200 OCC students expressed interest.

“We got a lot more interest than we were prepared for, which was great,” King said. “We had to make it manageable … so we landed on 40.”

The expectation was that community college international students and athletes might want to live in dormitories, but interest spread far beyond those, OCC’s Hurns said.

“It’s just been students with different needs and different wants for different experiences,” Hurns said. “There is a population of community college students who may not just have the desire, but could benefit from immersing themselves in a full college experience. They can focus on studying and taking classes.”

Among those who earned a spot in the OU dorms is Brady Kolacz, a Cass City resident who is in his first year at OCC, studying cybersecurity. He wanted to go to OCC because of the cost, the program, what he had heard about the professors and the ability to easily transfer to Oakland University. But he said he could go into the Air Force.

“I wanted to come here and see the atmosphere,” said Kolocz, 19. “My mom went to college at OU, and I wanted to see her old stomping ground.”

He was originally going to rent an apartment nearby, but is happy to live on campus so he can take advantage of the library to study and the leisure center to lift weights to try to stay in shape.

“I like that we don’t feel like strangers to the OU community,” Kolacz said. “I feel like we’re welcome. And we’re able to use all their facilities.”

Another OCC student living at OU is De’Jon Neely, a Detroit resident studying business.

“I love it,” said Neely, who said he didn’t want to go to college but was encouraged by his mother to attend community college.

He said he was then “blessed” to be able to live on OU’s campus and enjoy the college lifestyle. Neely takes three OCC classes in person and one online while working part-time in the evenings. It’s a departure from when he lived at home with his mother, stepfather, grandmother and younger brother.

“I have my own space and it’s teaching me how to grow up,” said Neely, 18. “I don’t have someone watching over me. I don’t have my mom standing over me saying, ‘Get up for class.’ All this is on my own, I have to clean my room. It teaches me to be a man.

Make a cost adjustment

Students living in OU’s halls of residence pay the same rate structure, but how they are charged differs.

Oakland University students living in the residence halls pay per term. Costs vary depending on which dormitory and how many people live in the room. But the average price per semester is $5,979, which includes a meal plan.

To make it manageable for OCC students, the university breaks down the costs for students to pay monthly. For a private room, it costs $1,350 per night. month or $5,400 per term.

“We know our costs are expensive, but if we could break it down to a month-to-month basis and still allow some flexibility around some of our meal plans, we thought we could provide a good product for students to consider.” King said.

OU’s move is smart, especially as high school graduating classes get smaller, said Brandy Johnson, president of the Michigan Community College Association. The number of Michigan high school students graduating in four years has decreased by 14% from 109,542 graduates in 2008 to 94,286 in 2023.

“The universities had built student capacity at a level that would serve incoming freshman classes,” Johnson said. “Changing demographics mean we have fewer and fewer 18-year-olds graduating from high school, and so the dormitories that once served larger classes are no longer needed. If universities have a surplus of affordable housing that would otherwise go unused , and community college students have a demand, it seems like an elegant solution to solve for both.”

Eboni Evbuomwan is studying nursing at OCC and lives on OU’s campus. For her first two years of college, she lived at home with her family in Warren after moving here from Windsor, Ontario, due to her father’s job transfer.

Evbuomwan lives in a room by herself, but said she is close to people who live on her floor. She enjoys all the events on OU’s campus, such as carnival and karaoke night, because they allow her to socialize with her peers.

“It’s been cool to have the experience of living on a campus,” Evbuomwan said, “even though I go to a community college.”

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