Transfers should be guaranteed on-campus housing
Every year, USC welcomes transfer students from institutions worldwide, making up nearly 30% of the Fall 2018 class. That means 30% of these students were not guaranteed on-campus housing. An essential part of a student’s first year at a new university — as a freshman or as a transfer student — the opportunity to socialize with peers and get familiarized with the campus. This is why guaranteed on-campus housing for transfer students is essential: Without it, acclimating to a new environment would prove to be difficult.
Housing for transfer students can be interpreted as a game of filling in the blanks: Wherever a bed may be available, a transfer student may be offered one. This tactic may be strategic for providing transfer students with on-campus housing, but it may be difficult for them to thrive. Chances are that transfer students are blindly placed with the roommates and suitemates for at least a year, which unfairly places transfer students at a socializing handicap. Cohabitants have already established friend groups while the transfer student is barely beginning to create those bonds. Further, it may be difficult for them to bond, since being a transfer student proves to be such a unique experience. Afterall, they are starting fresh in the middle of their college career, which may force them to end their old connections at their prior institutions for new ones at their new school.
Having on-campus apartment-style housing for transfer students is ideal. You’d get the ability to live in an apartment and learn to become a functioning young adult. Having this in an apartment-style building and environment allows transfers to begin to get used to cooking for themselves with the cushion of 40 dining hall swipes per semester. Transfers have either lived at home with family or in dorms before transferring, both of which don’t offer as many responsibilities.
On-campus apartments can ease transfer students from dorm-style housing they may have lived in before to an environment where they have more responsibilities to tend to. Having an entire apartment complex — or at least a couple of floors — available for transfer students to live in would foster a greater sense of community. A circle of transfers may ease the social curve of being a transfer. Transfers can bond over having to take more general education requirements and figuring out the best places to study around campus. Additionally, you’d have a group of friends to go to events with as you get a feel for the new campus culture.
This year, USC Housing made it possible for transfers to apply for freshman residential colleges. This may seem intuitive as both transfers and freshmen are attending USC for the first time. However, it holds transfer students back. Instead of allowing them to transition to more young-adult, independent responsibilities, they’re living like freshmen again.
Consider a cost-benefit analysis of freshman dorms versus off-campus apartments through the lens of a transfer student. A benefit of living in a freshman dorm is the convenience of living on campus, in walking distance of libraries, classes and campus events. However, the cost of living in on-campus freshman dorms is the lack of independence. Since freshmen dorms don’t have kitchens, they rely on dining halls for their meals. This removes the opportunity for a transfer student — who is a few years older — to learn how to not rely on access to dining halls and instead learn to cook for themselves.
A benefit of living off-campus in non-USC Housing apartments is the opportunity to function as an independent adult. In this form of housing, students are not required to get a meal plan. Instead, they’re able to learn how to be a young adult by buying groceries, cooking food for themselves regularly, paying rent monthly (maybe through their own income) and budgeting. A cost of living in this form of housing is the lack of a sense of community. Without being able to go down the hall and knock on the door of a fellow transfer, they’re unable to live in a community of their peers who may empathize better with being new to a university but already having college experience and all that comes with being a transfer student. This prevents them from finding an easily accessible community of fellow transfer students.
Transfer students should be around fellow transfers as they have similar experiences. Some are going to school away from home for the first time. For this reason, on-campus housing should be guaranteed to help transfer students thrive in their new environment with others who are going through similar experiences while learning to become more independent.