Starting this fall, families and fans can rent rooms in University of Missouri-Columbia residence halls for football games and other campus events.
The initiative is among those introduced last week by Mizzou leaders to the board of curators at their Columbia meeting as a means to offset the financial stress of declining freshman enrollment.
A website went live last week that allows people to book a two-room, four-bed suite for $120 per night. There’s an added cost for parking, according to the website.
Free high-speed wireless access is included, along with economy bed linens and towels.
Renting rooms for football games in particular has been discussed for months. After a few years of declining freshman enrollment, with a large projected dip this coming fall, Mizzou leaders have taken seven residence halls offline and decided to explore avenues such as rentals to make up money lost on that space.
Residence hall rooms will be available for rent on weekends starting this fall. Reservations must be made 48 hours in advance of the stay.
A Mizzou spokesman said leaders are still discussing whether alcohol will be allowed in the rental rooms.
Three of the seven vacant residence halls have been identified as ones to be used for conference and guest housing, including Center, Excellence and Discovery halls.
Those renting a room will have access, just like anyone who walks onto campus, to buy meals in campus cafeterias.
Earlier this month, University of Missouri system President Mun Choi proposed more strictly enforcing the policy requiring freshmen to live in campus housing. He estimated that could generate $750,000 a year.
Mizzou chief operating officer Gary Ward shared a longer-term plan to bolster the number of students living in residential halls to reach capacity by 2021 or 2022. If the plan works, the dorm room rental program could end after a year or two.
Ward said moves such as easing the requirement for upperclassmen to have a meal plan and opening the door to transfer students to live on campus, they expect to fill the dorms progressively in the next few years.
RECRUITMENT GOALS
In other recruitment efforts, Pelema Morrice, Mizzou’s vice provost for enrollment, shared with the curators plans to bring more National Merit Scholars and finalists to campus.
Missouri had more than 300 National Merit Scholar finalists this past academic year. Mizzou enrolled fewer than two dozen.
Morrice said Mizzou has struggled to compete with schools like the University of Alabama and the University of Oklahoma, which actively recruit those high performing students and cover tuition costs.
“That’s expensive,” curator chairman and St. Louis attorney Maurice Graham said about the recruitment effort.
But he added, “Other universities compete for those good students, so we are going to get much more aggressive competing for these high-ranking students both in Missouri and out of Missouri.”
Morrice also identified scholarship programs that would cover 100 percent of demonstrated need for honors students who are eligible for federal need-based financial aid, known as Pell grants.
This past year, Mizzou enrolled about 5,600 Pelleligible students, according to a campus spokesman.
NEED FOR A PLAN
The curators approved a plan to seek a 5 percent increase in appropriations from the Missouri Legislature in the 2018 session.
Interim chief financial officer Ryan Rapp stressed that the university system faces lingering budget cuts to meet the $100 million goal that system leaders required of the campuses this spring.
Leaders are weighing cuts that could consolidate and even do away with some academic programs. The timeline for completion varies by campus.
Rapp also stressed the need for the system to adopt a five-year financial plan, rather than the yearby-year effort universities have struggled with in times of state appropriation uncertainty.
After a lengthy discussion, the curators tabled a motion that would have requested funding for one capital project on each campus.
Mizzou would seek $150 million for a new translational medicine building that leaders argue would significantly help the research institution’s standing against its competitors.
The University of Missouri-St. Louis would ask for $6.2 million to update some buildings and potentially demolish others.
Most curators questioned the likelihood of capital funding passing the Legislature. The discussion was tabled until July so that university leaders could explore whether smaller amounts would be more likely to win approval.