What is one of the most important things for a college student? A place to live, not just a place to hang out; but a place to sleep, eat, and most importantly bathe. College students already have enough to worry about with grades, holding a decent job to earn enough money to even eat, and having somewhat of a social life on top of all of that. As a student of Collin College that is not from the area, nor having family to live with, one of the biggest problems to come across, was the issue of not having dorms to live in while attending school. This was an issue because it is already hard to find a decent job that pays enough to even afford a place of your own, especially without having parents to help you out financially.
It is understandable that it can be hard to find a location to put a dorms area and there must be funds for it, but it is something that is imperative for any and all students. Granted, there is an apartment complex that is located near the Spring Creek campus that is called Century Court. It is for Collin College students that are full-time, but is it enough? That can easily be debated. Out of all the campuses that Collin College has, it is the only one that has something that is even somewhat close to what other colleges have as student housing.
When searching for more information on Collin College and any student housing, there is no information to be found about anything related to student living. However, there is something that mentions the Collin College Student Housing Foundation Endowment. This is a scholarship that is provided to students to help them pay for their living situation. Even though a scholarship is nice, but is it enough? Unlikely.
Some could say that there doesn’t need to be student housing because there are enough apartments to rent from, but can students afford them? Highly unlikely. Being my only source of income, I struggled to gather enough money to make ends meet; it is a huge challenge when most jobs ask for an applicant to have a degree, but they are in the process of trying to achieve that; so with that, a student is stuck in a vicious circle of fighting to have enough money to survive, but not able to because they don’t meet those requirements yet. This would be a great position for student housing to take its place and help students like this out.
There is also the idea of a student having a roommate or renting a room from a family that lives in the area. Although both are a good idea, they can also be a bad idea. With the idea of renting a room from someone, there are all kinds of dangers that someone could be putting themselves in, not to mention being at risk to be thrown out with nowhere else to live at any given moment. Following this issue, there is also the basic issues of living with people that you don’t know that is not under control like student housing usually is.
The issue with student housing is not only a problem of Collin College, and it is not only a recent problem. In a article entitled Student Housing: Colleges Line Up for U.S. Loans, it is mentioned that “The current and growing shortage of student housing on college and university campuses is a mundane subject”. (Carter 277) Granted this article is from 1966, it still points out the truth that there has been a problem to exist in relation to a lack of student housing. This issue is not talked about a lot, which may make it seem like it doesn’t exist, but Collin College is living proof that is does and still exist.
Since stating why Collin College not having student housing is a problem, it could be good to mention of what good can come out of it. Typically, universities or colleges have a student apartment like Collin’s one at the Spring Creek Campus, they also have on campus dorms for their students to live in. What is the good to come out of this? The first positive result of this is the higher chance of students making to class on time and not having to drive through traffic on top of trying to find a decent parking spot. Secondly, a student is able to use their financial aid to support the payment of their living situation rather than waiting for the refund to be deposited into their banking account and struggling until then.
