Date of Award

Spring 6-13-2025

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D. in Higher Education

Organizational Unit

Morgridge College of Education, Higher Education

First Advisor

Cecilia M. Orphan

Second Advisor

Chris Nelson

Third Advisor

Robyn Thomas Pitts

Fourth Advisor

Jing Li

Fifth Advisor

Andrew Goetz

Copyright Statement / License for Reuse

All Rights Reserved
All Rights Reserved.

Keywords

Anchor institutions, Housing, Mixed methods, Neoliberalism, Regional public universities, University districts

Abstract

I examined housing costs in neoliberalized consumer spaces (Cunningham, 2016; Saunders & Ramírez, 2017) in regional public university (Orphan, et al., 2022) districts. I use geographic methods (Jonas, et al., 2015; Daché-Gerbino, 2018) with an explanatory sequential mixed methods design and a complex case study approach (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2018). Results from my spatial analyses showed that residents who live within one-half mile of universities spend more on monthly housing costs ($1,331) than those who do not ($1,227) except in the case of regional public universities ($1,184). Results from a regression analysis demonstrated that eight institutional variables predicted 33.2% of the variance in housing costs within these districts. Spatial results further showed that for every $100 increase in on-campus room and board costs, there was a predicted increase in residential housing costs of $7.50. I conducted observations and analyzed digital documents for a case study of San Diego State University’s Mission Valley campus. Results indicated that capital development activities relate to the commodification of higher education and consumer spaces (e.g., striving for prestige, focusing on innovation, and making decisions based on market-rate housing). I integrated the findings through meta-inferences (Teddlie & Tashakkori, 2009) to explain how three variables (prestige, innovation, and market-rate housing) affected the housing costs of residents in neoliberalized regional public university districts. This study has implications for residents who live near regional public universities and university leaders who want to work with their residential members by anchoring their institutions to their communities. I recommend university planners and developers build more affordable housing options for on-campus residents and create public spaces open for all, without practices rooted in commodification and consumerism.

Copyright Date

6-2025

Publication Statement

Copyright is held by the author. User is responsible for all copyright compliance.

Rights Holder

Becket C. Duncan

Provenance

Received from ProQuest

File Format

application/pdf

Language

English (eng)

Extent

291 pgs

File Size

3.2 MB

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