Dive Brief:
- Colleges and universities in San Francisco, an area with high property values and rental prices, have expressed difficulty in enticing potential faculty to teach, as the applicants cite an inability to afford to live there on a professor’s salary, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education.
- Some universities have engaged in home-loan assistance for some faculty or offering on-campus housing, but results have varied, and while colleges have been encouraging applicants to research the local housing market, some professors make multi-hour commutes each day in order to live in affordable areas.
- One professor at San Jose State University suggested that the university offer financial planning workshops and tutorials for incoming faculty to make sure that the transition could work, but noted the faculty-in-residence positions usually only last for a few years.
Dive Insight:
College professors are finding it difficult to live in the towns and cities where their colleges are located, but the attractiveness of the area can be due, in part, to the colleges themselves. Colleges are populated with young adults who venture off-campus seeking bars and restaurants, as well as venues for arts, music and culture. Entrepreneurs will note the opportunity and satisfy their interests with new businesses.
These are the kind of neighborhood accouterments that will attract residents and drive prices up. The college town life can seem attractive to recent graduates, who grew accustomed to a particular area and lifestyle, and these towns are also increasingly seen as potential areas for older individuals to move, as they view college towns as vibrant spots with a stable economic foundation.
One possible solution could be to make faculty-in-residence positions and residencies more plentiful and robust, but faculty may need more stability than a temporary situation can offer. If a faculty member with a family is moving to a new area but only guaranteed a few years of housing, the job will seem all the less attractive if the faculty’s salary will not cover the eventual expenses of finding off-campus housing.
Resident advisors recently called for unionization in part because of the worry that their living space was inherently fraught, and faculty members living in campus housing might feel similar kinds of worry. In the long term, colleges and universities may be better served by expanding their stock of units available for faculty, if campus space permits. The initial investment could potentially pay off in attracting more accomplished faculty if living expenses were less of a burden for interested faculty to consider.