Quote from @Usman S.:
Great post!
What is your view on investing in student housing around UNCG? I love the area but a bit concerned about the reports I have been seeing with the student population trend.
I am not super familiar with that college if I am being honest. I have been to pretty much every college campus in the state that has influence in most of the major investor markets, including universities in the eastern half of the state, which I don't even service. My lack of knowledge of that school specifically would make me want to not comment too much on that without doing some additional research on it, I'll give it a quick whack this morning though!
Looking a bit more into your source there, if you check out the 'new student' rather than the continuing education students or both it looks like that is the more concerning data in my opinion. New students is probably a better indicator than returning students. That said, it has been steadily trickling down since 2014, that trend has been holding strong, as every year since 2014 we are seeing that number decline whether Fall or Spring semesters. So I don't see where that trend is getting uprooted in the short term unless the college can discover the cause of the negative trend and rectify it.
I wouldn't blame COVID for what we see in Greensboro, as this trend is showing since 2014.
https://educationdata.org/coll...
I took a wider lens, and I think this may give some better bigger picture understanding of what's going on as well. If you check this post out, it's screaming decline across the board nationally for college and participation. One data set covers College Enrollment Trends amongst every state from 2010-2020; NC trended down by 4.80%. Some states much worse, and only a handful of states saw meaningful growth.
The question would be Greensboro's 2010 enrollment to 2020 to see if it over or under-performed the state average decrease of 4.80%
https://web.archive.org/web/20... I found 2009-2010 here, which would suggest a total student headcount of 18,433 for the Fall Semester. 17,978/18,433= .975 or reflecting a -2.5% in Headcount. I would say that is a good indicator and probably a solid point to know about UNCG and it's student population.
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/d...
Another supporting document that may be interesting to take a look at. This is up to 2021, and would support my claim that we are seeing a decline across the country on average, and not just specifically a few schools.
Greensboro has a reported ~140,000 housing units, 56% owner occupied means ~61,000 total units for renting. With ~18,000 students (Fall) the student's are still representing nearly a third of what the rental market may be supporting, that still seems pretty solid.
Again, I haven't done very much research in this specific category, but it is interesting, and what I just found through my quick looking here would suggest that Greensboro like many Unis in the country, are trying to figure out how to bring their students back in, that said they have done quite well by comparison to other states, and is beating out the state average decline rate.
Based off your research, and what I am bringing to the table here (hopefully all new things you haven't already familiarized yourself with!), I am curious to know what you think!
Thanks for the great question, looking forward to hearing from you soon,
Cheers!
