University Residency Requirements

Rules that make students live on campus decide how many undergraduates ever reach the private rental market, which is why they matter to Richard Joseph Spinelli, whose Sandhills Real Estate leases homes within walking distance of Fordham University’s Rose Hill campus. A residency requirement obliges students to live in university housing for a set period, most often the first two years. Several universities have adopted or kept such rules in recent years, and their published policies show both the reasons and the exceptions.¹ This entry surveys them one institution at a time, then turns to the research behind them and to the alternative of a housing guarantee.

Two Approaches

Universities that want students close to campus have two broad tools. A requirement compels: students must live in halls or approved housing and may leave only through an exemption. A guarantee promises: students who want a university room receive one, but they remain free to rent elsewhere. The first shrinks the pool of students in the neighborhood market by rule. The second shapes it by supply, since the number of students who leave depends on how many beds exist and how attractive they are.

Cornell University

Cornell requires its full time, Ithaca based first year and second year students to live in university housing, and those living on campus must carry a meal plan.¹ First year and transfer students are assigned to residence halls. In the second year the rule loosens: students may stay in residence halls or move to approved, university affiliated housing, which can include houses held by recognized student organizations and university owned cooperatives.¹

The university states its reasons directly. Its policy says that students living on campus show higher academic achievement, better social and emotional adjustment and a stronger ability to build community than those living off campus during the same years.¹

Exemptions at Cornell

Cornell lists the students who fall outside the rule. They include married or partnered students, veterans discharged under conditions other than dishonorable, students arriving with dependents, and students who will be 21 or older at the start of the year.¹ Transfers who already had two years of campus living elsewhere, or who enter as juniors or seniors, are also exempt. So are commuters who have lived for at least six months with a parent or guardian within 25 miles of campus.¹ Exemptions last one academic year and must be requested again for the next.

American University

American University adopted a two year rule for the cohort entering in fall 2025. Students must live in campus housing in their first and second years, and first and second year residents must also hold a meal plan.² New transfer students are not covered. The exemption list is shorter than Cornell’s: students 22 or older by August 1, students who are married or in a domestic partnership, parents of a minor living with them, and students living with a parent or guardian at a permanent home within 25 miles of campus.²

The university justified the rule partly by comparison. Its housing office says its Washington peers, George Washington University and Georgetown, already have residency requirements, and that a survey of 36 peer institutions across the country found 23 with a requirement of two years or more.²

Student Response at American

The student newspaper, The Eagle, reported the change in its April 2025 print edition. The rule begins with the Class of 2029, and the university’s announcement pointed to its two Washington peers.³ Students interviewed by the paper were divided. One first year student living off campus said the choice to do so had felt freeing and that campus living was now “being forced upon the students.” Another, living on campus, said the first year there mattered for making friends but that living off campus made more sense as a sophomore.³

The paper also reported that a campus working group had studied the change since fall 2023, and that the university was not adding campus housing at the time.³ A requirement without new beds means the existing halls must absorb a second class year.

Cal Poly San Luis Obispo

Cal Poly states the rule most plainly: all students must live in campus housing for their first two years, and they are told so at admission.⁴ The university ties the rule to connection with campus life and to its hands on teaching model. Its housing office warns students and families not to sign a lease for the second year, or to arrange other housing, without an approved exemption, and says exemption decisions are final.⁴

Exemptions at Cal Poly

The grounds for an exemption include independent student status, approved internships or study away from the area, documented medical or disability needs, and living with a parent or guardian at a primary home in the county or in a few nearby towns.⁴

Common Features

The three policies share a structure. Each covers the first two years, each links campus living to a required meal plan or to campus life more broadly, and each carves out defined groups, above all students who live with family near campus. Each also treats the rule as a matter of timing. Students are notified early, exemptions are requested before a housing contract is signed, and second year leases elsewhere are discouraged until an exemption is granted. The likely effect on a neighborhood rental market is that fewer sophomores enter it, leaving the private market near such campuses weighted toward juniors, seniors and graduate students.

The Research Case

Housing offices often cite a national study produced by ACUHO I, the college housing officers’ association, with Indiana University’s Center for Postsecondary Research. It drew on about 33,000 first year and sophomore students at 76 residential institutions who took the National Survey of Student Engagement in 2018.⁵ First year and sophomore campus residents persisted at rates 2.0 and 2.2 percentage points higher than peers living off campus apart from their families.⁵

For sophomores, the study found that those living off campus were less likely to return the next year, and those whose trip to campus took longer than ten minutes were the least likely of all. The authors recommended that sophomores live on campus where feasible, while noting they may need less staff support than first year students.⁵ That finding is the main empirical basis for extending requirements from one year to two. Capacity limits cut the other way as well: the Associated Press reported in 2022 that demand for campus rooms at the University of Tampa ran so high that it offered incoming freshmen a tuition break to defer entry by a year.⁶

The Guarantee Alternative

Not every university takes this route. Others promise housing to students rather than require it, so that the decision to rent off campus stays with the student; Fordham’s version of that promise is set out, with its source, under university housing policy. The Boston Globe reported in 2016 that Boston College had pledged in 2009 to house every student who wanted to live on campus, and that about 85 percent of its students already did.⁷ The Heights explained in 2023 that Boston College juniors holding four years of university housing choose among campus apartments, while those holding three look for leases in Brighton and Newton.⁸ How a guarantee works, and how it interacts with lotteries and converted rooms when beds run short, is covered under university housing policy. The Fordham figures show how many of its undergraduates live in and out of the halls, and the conversion from students to beds follows those counts into the rental market. Near a campus that guarantees rather than requires, sophomores remain part of the private market, which is the starting point for off campus housing demand and for the Sandhills model of leasing to student groups.