Commuter school no more? Some Sacramento State students now must live on campus

Emily Enriquez didn’t need Sacramento State to mandate that she live on campus. She was already sold on the idea of living a short walk from classes and campus events.

Starting this fall, Enriquez and more than a thousand other first-year Sac State students will live on campus under a new requirement that university officials say will boost graduation rates and build a greater sense of community. 

It’s also the latest example of university leaders’ efforts to shed Sac State’s longstanding reputation as a commuter school.

“It’s better to live on campus … for meeting new people and learning how to be independent,” she said Wednesday while waiting in line to move into Mt. Whitney, a new dorm room on the California State University campus. 

Because she is from Sacramento, Enriquez isn’t required to live in dorms this year, unlike other students who are subject to a two-year, on-campus housing mandate at Sacramento State that went into effect this week. The cost of a bed on campus starts at just over $1,000 per month.

President Luke Wood said during a Thursday address to the campus that the university is trying to elevate Sacramento State’s “national brand” by expanding sports programs and growing programming that serves marginalized students. Wood said that the housing requirement is a key part of changing the university’s brand.

“Housing is critical because we want to make sure that our students are being successful,” Wood told EdSource after his address. He said students who live in campus housing are more likely to graduate on time with less debt, and are less likely to struggle with food and housing insecurity.

“It’s a single intervention that addresses a multitude of challenges, and so that’s why we’ve been so focused on housing, and it’s working,” Wood said.

Some students have raised affordability concerns about the requirement, arguing that finding housing off campus or living with family and friends is a cheaper option. The housing mandate will prevent some future students from applying, one student leader said.

In addition to the housing requirement, Wood is pursuing other efforts to move Sacramento State beyond its reputation as a commuter school. He spent $23 million to move the university’s football program into the Division I Mid-American Conference, calling the move an effort to put the “university on the map.” Wood also has big ambitions for a new multiuse football stadium to accommodate more fans. 

On Thursday, Wood also announced that the university will invest $150 million to build a new engineering building on campus. 

There has not been a systemwide discussion about whether more campuses should adopt similar on-campus housing requirements, said Ray Murillo, CSU’s interim assistant vice chancellor of student affairs.

“Each campus has its autonomy to make its own decisions and determination on that … because they know their students’ needs best,” Murillo said.

At least eight of CSU’s 22 campuses have at one point required their first-year students to live on campus. San Jose State University first required first-year students to live on campus in 2011. San Diego State University, among other CSU campuses, expanded its policy to apply to sophomores in 2016, citing a substantial improvement in persistence rates for students who live on campus. 

Providing students with continuous residential, academic and community support, in addition to living on campus, was crucial to achieving better outcomes, an SDSU spokesperson said in a statement.

San Jose State University first suspended its on-campus requirement in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic and has continued not to require students to live on campus because of the number of online courses offered, which “made a mandatory residency requirement inappropriate.”

SJSU spokesperson Michelle Smith McDonald said in a statement that “we have not identified recent SJSU-specific evidence showing that suspending the housing requirement has led to lower academic performance or retention.”

‘It’s like a little village’

Hundreds of freshmen arrived on campus early Wednesday morning, welcomed by the Sacramento State Cheer and Dance squad and a 30-person marching band. 

The towering parking structures surrounding the 300-acre campus underscores the fact that the vast majority of Sacramento State students will remain commuters.

In 2024, Sac State’s undergraduate enrollment eclipsed 28,000 — yet just 7% of the student body lived on campus. That figure will rise to 11% of the total student body, according to Nadine Kelley, the university’s executive director of housing services. She expects the total percentage of students who live on campus to increase by 1% next year, which is still below the university’s goal of 15% to 20%.

In recent years, the demand for on-campus housing at Sacramento State has exceeded the number of beds.

Even with the recent construction of Mt. Whitney, a 335-bed residence hall, there were still 151 students on the wait list as of June. 

Mt. Whitney, built at a cost of $69 million and funded with a state student housing grant, will only serve some of the campus’s future housing needs. 

Kelley said plans to expand on-campus living will benefit students. They’ll be within walking distance of the library, can join student clubs without worrying about commutes and better connect with other students and educators, she said.

“What we found with students that chose to live on campus, they were a little bit more successful than our commuter students in graduating in four years,” Kelley said.

Sacramento State officials said they will monitor graduation rates to help measure the success of the housing requirement. Between 2015 and 2025, the university’s four-year graduation rate for freshmen increased from 9% to over 30% as a result of a $3 billion statewide initiative to increase Cal State’s four- to six-year graduation rates. 

The results were a mixed bag across CSU campuses. Despite the gains, Sacramento State’s four-year graduate rate remains in the system’s bottom half compared to the other Cal State campuses. 

For many years, universities across the country have introduced housing requirements to improve student outcomes, said Royel Johnson, the co-director of the Pullias Center for Higher Education at the University of Southern California.

Research has shown that living on campus for students’ first year in college is linked to higher GPAs and better retention, he said. While the benefits are not uniform across student populations, Johnson commended Sacramento State leaders for implementing the housing requirement. 

“Here’s an institution that is leveraging insights from research to make practical decisions that will hopefully boost student success,” Johnson said.

Living on campus is not practical for all students. There are lots of students who are juggling a range of personal-family commitments, such as parenting, for whom it makes sense to live off campus, he said. 

Sacramento State leaders have sought to generate student engagement on campus through various endeavors, including hosting free concerts after sporting events. 

“The relationships you make in the dorm, it’s like a little village,” said mechanical engineering senior Matthew Gonzales. A former on-campus resident, he was among several hundred volunteers helping students move into the Mt. Whitney dorms on Wednesday. 

Some students protest dorm housing costs

Top of the list of concerns over Sacramento State’s new housing policy is how much dorms cost students. Some students have expressed concern that the housing requirement will prevent future students from enrolling.

Sofia Gonzalez, a junior studying business and marketing, said that she would not have enrolled at Sacramento State if the housing requirements had been in effect two years ago because of the cost. Gonzalez is a leader of the group Students for Quality Education that organized a protest over the housing requirement last year. 

Gonzalez lived on campus her first year, which she acknowledged helped her feel more connected to the university community, but she said that her current $750 monthly rent is cheaper than on-campus housing.

“I feel bad for the students who can’t afford Sac State just because they can’t live there for two years,” Gonzalez said. 

The cost of room and board depends on the type of housing. The monthly cost ranges from $1,080 for a bed in a triple room, to $1,850 for a studio. Meal plans for the academic year cost between $4,550 and $6,030, depending on how many times per week students can visit dining halls. 

The housing requirement begins amid a multiyear increase to student tuition that the CSU Board of Trustees approved in 2023.

Anticipating pushback from some students over the mandate, the university created exemptions for several groups of freshmen, including students who are at least 21 years old, can demonstrate financial hardship, or live within 50 miles of the campus. The local residency exemption next year will only apply to students who live within 30 miles of the campus.

Enrollment numbers for 2026 are still being finalized, but last year Sacramento State enrolled about 3,700 freshmen. The university granted more than 1,900 exemptions to the housing requirement, the vast majority of which were for those who lived locally. 

Hope Holmes could have requested an exemption from the housing requirement, but opted not to. As she prepared to move on Wednesday, Holmes expressed some relief that she wouldn’t have to commute to and from her hometown of Stockton, about an hour’s drive from campus but within the 50-mile exemption limit. 

“I don’t know how I feel about living in a dorm with someone,” Holmes said, “but I’m excited to be on campus.”

This story was originally published by EdSource.