On-Campus Housing’s Impact on Degree Completion and Upward Transfer in the Community College Sector: A Comprehensive Quasi-Experimental Analysis

The college student persistence literature has indicated that on-campus housing positively affects student persistence. This evidence, however, has largely been based on the experiences of students at 4-year institutions—not community colleges. This study aimed to address this gap in the literature by comprehensively evaluating the impact of both living at and simply attending a community college that offers on-campus housing options on (a) associate degree completion, (b) transfer to a 4-year institution, and (c) bachelor’s degree completion. Drawing data from the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 and the accompanying Postsecondary Education Transcript Study and using propensity score analysis with doubly robust estimation techniques, we found living in on-campus housing significantly increased the probability of both upward transfer and bachelor’s degree completion with no effects on associate degree completion. Despite these findings, we refrain from suggesting that all community colleges use limited financial resources to construct new or additional on-campus housing options, especially when considering the heterogeneity of their student bodies. Rather we recommend that community colleges with on-campus housing strive to identify direct-from-high school students who intend to transfer and incentivize them to live on campus while offering additional opportunities to promote social integration beyond on-campus housing for all students.