THE HARVARD GRADUATE STUDENT HOUSING SURVEY

Regardless of where you currently live, and if availability and cost were not an issue, in which of the following types of housing would you most like to be living now?

On a chilly fall morning a small team of Harvard executives and a survey design expert met in Harvard Square to set guidelines for the 2005 Graduate Student Housing Survey. This survey was a new initiative of Harvard Real Estate Services (HRES) to assess students’ housing experiences and desires. The team’s intention was to update, improve, and expand upon an earlier major survey administered in 2001.

As chief marketer of the 2,600 units Harvard University supplied to house its graduate students and other affiliates, HRES director Susan Keller was responsible for developing and renting dormitory rooms, studios, and apartments that presented an optimized balance of location, price, and space. Pressures on HRES decisions were multiple, but all were subject to the university’s paramount consideration: to offer its students outstanding life and learning experiences. Keller’s decision making hinged on understanding the changing conditions of the private housing market as well as the fine-grained patchwork of the graduate student population. Another constant concern for Keller was to monitor housing initiatives at other leading universities that might interfere with successful graduate student recruitment at Harvard.

Also present at the meeting was Rena Cheskis-Gold, principal of Demographic Perspectives, a New Haven, Connecticut-based consultancy that specialized in the design of surveys. Known for her research experience in the higher-education domain, Cheskis-Gold had already written the 2001 questionnaire.

A particular challenge for the 2005 survey was to generate useful information for what was locally known as the “Allston Initiative,” a coordinated effort to lay out the framework of expansion onto extensive Harvard-owned properties in Allston, just across the Charles River from the historic college campus and adjacent to the athletic facilities and Harvard Business School. The odd mix of container parks, warehouses, and business buildings that currently occupied the Allston properties was to be replaced over the course of the next 10 to 25 years by what some dared to call a “second Harvard Square.” Although long-range projections situated the Graduate School of Education and School of Public Health on these properties, Harvard president Larry Summers had launched an initiative aimed at establishing a vision for the use of this space. Harvard Planning and Real Estate (HPRE), the organization in place at the time of the 2001 survey, had subsequently been split into two distinct entities, HRES and Harvard Planning + Allston Initiative. The latter was charged to “plan in a way that best supports Harvard’s academic mission and growth needs while ensuring that the new campus is an integral part of the broader urban community.” Believing housing to be an important part of this mission, Keller had remarked, “It would be criminal not to use the opportunity of the 2005 survey to assess and inform the vision for housing in Allston.”

A third participant, Alexandra Danahy, liaison between HRES and the Allston Initiative, had seen firsthand the value of the 2001 survey data to the first-round Allston task forces. Therefore, she had high expectations for the new survey, though she added:

We are speaking about a very different kind of information, not simply what students are willing to pay or what features they currently prefer, we are looking for information to help plan real estate that will be developed in 25 years.

Keller, Cheskis-Gold, and Danahy had one main question in mind: How could they design the 2005 Graduate Student Housing Survey for maximum impact? To answer that question, they decided to (1) draw lessons from the 2001 survey experience, determining what survey data had most (or least) impact and why, and (2) imagine what survey data—accounting for the power and limits of survey research—could be most useful for the Allston Initiative. Keller started by recounting the circumstances that led to the 2001 survey.

Circumstances of the 2001 Survey: Mounting Crisis

Conceived as a residential urban university, Harvard had traditionally placed almost all undergraduate students in houses of character such as the famous river houses on the left bank of the Charles River. Graduate students could choose where they wanted to live; the approximately 40% who resided in Harvard-owned housing compared with about 50% who obtained campus housing at MIT, Stanford, Princeton, and Columbia. Harvard’s business and law schools had residential facilities for their own students, but most Harvard graduate students were housed in HPRE-operated apartment complexes in the vicinity of Harvard Square. The approximately 2,400 residences included studios (300 square feet) and one-, two-, and three-bedroom apartments (450 sf, 750 sf, and 900 sf, respectively) that exhibited great variation in features (private bath, kitchen, and so forth), location, style, and vintage. The university was committed to the highest standards of quality and maintenance supported by a long-standing policy to spend or save annually 2%–3% of each building’s replacement value.

Vacancies were few, and most apartments were allocated via a waiting list. Rents were set at prevailing market rates based on a regression analysis using the rates posted in more than 4,000 apartments in Cambridge, Allston, and neighboring Somerville, where many students lived, and adjusting for trends and other factors. A faculty committee had determined in 1983 that the university should practice a fair-market rent policy because otherwise students who had the opportunity to live in Harvard housing would benefit from a distinct financial advantage if the rents were set below market. Financial aid had always been determined by the individual graduate schools and not through the renting process. But historically, within Boston and Cambridge rental markets, the rents had increased at a higher rate than financial aid.

HPRE’s apartment complexes were expected to be self-financing economic initiatives based on market rents. In order to develop new housing, the university offered favorable credit rates.

However, in view of space needs and high building costs, the university would complement the credit with measured investments.

As the twentieth century drew to a close, so, too, did the Cambridge real estate market; the less than 1% rental vacancy was insufficient to absorb the incoming flow of graduate students, who were forced to live increasingly farther from campus. Having students housed in Somerville and even Arlington, it was feared, would exert a negative impact on campus life and atmosphere. As prices skyrocketed, horror stories were heard of students arriving in the fall without campus housing needs settled. A similar situation was critical at other urban universities such as Stanford and Columbia; it was rumored that Stanford graduate students had taken recourse to sleeping in their cars in campus parking lots. With a number of competing campuses offering more available housing solutions, graduate housing was becoming a noticeable recruiting disadvantage for Harvard.

Anticipating such problems, and conscious that a close community was essential to a learning model that revolved around group discussion, Harvard Business School (HBS) had taken the lead in setting for itself the goal of housing 80% of its students on campus. To support this ambitious housing goal a new apartment complex was proposed for One Western Avenue, an address adjacent to the HBS campus. A survey, prepared with the help of HBS professor Stephen Greyser, was taken by MBA students to help understand the specific housing needs of business students. The information was needed to ensure that the newly offered (and other renovated) housing would be an attractive option for future students of HBS.

Triggered by the HBS survey experience, the idea came out that detailed survey data was just what HPRE needed to start handling the housing crisis more effectively. A survey of all graduate students, Keller thought, would quantify aspects of the housing problem and afford unique insights that might inform the design of novel solutions that would be both satisfactory and economical. It was increasingly challenging to respect the fair-market price policy while maintaining affordable housing options for students. An idea emerged to design new types of apartments that would be satisfactory but smaller. The 2001 survey could provide the necessary guidance for designing the new housing products. In any case, there was a great desire to develop new housing more responsive to the current demand, and collecting data from the survey would help transcend the present state of anecdotal knowledge.

Design Process

First Decisions

It having been decided to take the initiative to the next step, it was determined that the purpose of the survey would be to obtain useful quantified information that would influence future design and marketing decisions as well as influence and change the dynamics of thinking about housing at Harvard, specifically, make it more centered on demand. Keller explained:

The survey had multiple purposes. We wanted to talk about demand, demonstrate the importance of housing in the graduate student experience, and provide a segmented account of current experiences and desires regarding housing solutions.

A much anticipated aspect of the survey project also established at the outset was determination of the survey population. The essentially unbounded accessibility of e-mail and the Internet would enable simultaneous polling of the entire graduate student population, which might facilitate comparisons across important subsegments (e.g., by school, national background, and family situation). A “websurvey” would make the survey effort more repeatable over the years. For a survey of the scale proposed a budget of approximately $50,000 (typical for substantial marketing research studies) was projected.

Also at the outset an explicit effort was made to identify the audiences for the survey beyond the HPRE team itself. Admissions, the provost, deans of student life, and similarly named directors of each of Harvard’s 10 graduate schools being viewed as the prime audience, these decision makers were invited to form the study’s advisory committee. A “road show” took the HPRE team from school to school to raise awareness of the survey’s potential by relating HBS’s recent successful experience with the survey in support of the One Western Avenue project. Input generated by these road shows contributed to the list of themes for the 2001 survey. Various student councils and the university’s transportation department were also solicited for themes of interest.

Drafting the Questions

Subsequently, focus groups were conducted and population members interviewed to assess whether the themes resonated with their experience and the vocabulary and issues of interest corresponded to their sensitivities. “To become a productive encounter,” explained survey designer Cheskis-Gold, “a survey should not confront people with terms and categories that might be perceived as foreign, irrelevant, or inappropriate despite their relevance for the client of the survey.”

In drafting the survey questions Cheskis-Gold systematically avoided jargon, shorthand, and technical terms. Her intention was to write questions that, being straightforward to read and interpret, would elicit straightforward, unambiguous answers.

Response format was equally important to the survey design. For example, the importance of housing features could either be ranked (e.g., “rank the following aspects from most important to least important”) or rated (e.g., “rate on an n-point scale how important the following aspects of housing are to you”). Earlier HPRE surveys had used a ranking format, but Cheskis-Gold opted for predominantly a rating format for the 2001 survey. Especially in the context of housing decisions, Cheskis-Gold believed that ranking would artificially inflate the top feature (i.e., “rental cost”) and reveal little discrimination among the remaining items. In contrast, ratings could be statistically compared across population segments to assess significant differences in taste, and the differences of mean rating across features could provide an estimate of the gap separating the features.

There was a concern that ratings might be high for all attributes, thereby blurring the information content. Consequently, graduate students were to be asked to indicate directly which was most important in pairs of critical attributes such as monthly rent vs. space. This format was quite unusual and viewed by the survey design team as an exploratory first cut.

Survey designers also paid special attention to purely descriptive questions about current housing and transportation for which accurate and sufficient categories were needed to support a segmented analysis of the results.

Online

The HPRE team believed that an online survey, or “websurvey,” would have several advantages over conventional mailed surveys. Respondents (at least in this population) could be reliably reached at a low cost, and the response rate might benefit from the convenient format. Data entry and analysis would be instantaneous, and error due to human intervention essentially eliminated (given competent programming). Survey screens could be customized to incorporate colors and logos that might increase respondent involvement.

Websurveys also, however, implied a number of challenges that perturbed the conventional wisdom of survey design.

- Respondents had no physical means to assess in advance the size of the survey or their progress as they worked through the questionnaire. In anticipation of this problem, duration of the questionnaire was clearly noted at the outset, and progress cues were added throughout.

- Respondents had a tendency to leave self-administered surveys incomplete. Thus, against conventional wisdom (which assumed that such questions would be left to the end of the survey), easy but crucial questions about respondent characteristics were moved to the middle of the questionnaire

- It was difficult to predict what respondents using different types of interface would actually see on their screen (e.g., colors, fonts, numbers of lines simultaneously visible).

- Other considerations included whether subjects should be required to answer all questions for the questionnaire to be valid (which they were not), whether the questionnaire should be completed in a single session (which was requested), and what degree of confidentiality should be guaranteed

Maximizing the Response Rate

A key challenge for the successful design of an online, self-administered survey was to achieve maximum response. A first, essential strategy was to write a relevant questionnaire styled and using language consistent with the values of the target population. “The central rule of questionnaire design,” maintained Cheskis-Gold, “is to make it simple for the respondent to fill out. The questionnaire should be eye candy, nice to look at, clear, flowing, easy. I try to be driven by an ideal where the respondent would want to comment: ’Thanks for asking me.’”

To promote the survey would also involve elaborate strategizing. It was determined that the survey would be advertised via a series of four e-mails and remain accessible for three weeks. A pre-survey e-mail from the dean, announcing and warmly endorsing the survey, would be followed by the launching e-mail containing the survey’s URL. It was believed that this initial multistep process would be more engaging than a one-shot cold call. A follow-up e-mail emphasizing the deadline would be sent to graduate students who failed to respond promptly. Finally, a thank you note would be e-mailed to all respondents.

Entry in a drawing for a CD player provided an incentive. The idea of offering a greater incentive to respondents who were quicker to respond was considered but dropped.

A print version of the final survey instrument is reproduced in Exhibit 1

Results Overview

The 38% of Harvard graduate students who had responded by the closing of the survey on November 19, 2001 constituted a verifiably representative sample of the overall population in terms of gender, age, marital status, and year of study. The response rate varied by school, from 25%–30% of dental and divinity school students to 50%–60% of business and public health students.

In her report dated February 2002 Cheskis-Gold discussed the data extensively in a text format illustrated with many tables and charts and enriched with a limited number of quotes extracted from the comments section of the survey (section G) used to paraphrase some of the survey results. An appendix reported for all survey questions average statistics, most often in two columns contrasting results for students living in Harvard-owned vs. privately owned housing. A later report that tabulated all responses on a per-school comparison basis was considered by survey clients to be extremely valuable.

Current Housing

Forty-four percent of respondents lived in Harvard-owned buildings. Graduate residence halls (housing 23% of polled students) were more likely to be populated by single students with no children or by first-year students. HPRE apartments (housing 19%) were more likely to be occupied by students with children. Most represented in private-market rentals (which housed 43% of polled students in apartments and multifamily houses) were married students with no children.

Average rent for students in private-market housing was about $150 above the average rent ($1,303) for HPRE apartments. Students living in private-market housing, however, were more likely to occupy larger apartments. HPRE services had been used by 49% of the respondents, 41% of whom used the waiting list on the basis of which HPRE allocated apartments. The waiting list was the most used service

Regarding satisfaction, students across the board were mostly satisfied with convenience and mostly dissatisfied with cost and feeling part of the Harvard community. Average satisfaction

ratings are presented in Exhibit 2. Private housing generally received slightly higher satisfaction scores, mostly for “Feel like living in ’real’ world” and “Availability of parking” items. Harvard housing residents were more satisfied with respect to “Feel part of Harvard community,” “Convenient location for me,” and “Close to friends.”

First-Year Expectations

Expectations prior to joining graduate school varied greatly depending on degree of familiarity with the Boston market. For example, average expectations (on a 5-point scale) regarding housing modernity, roominess, and ease to find were, respectively, 3.0, 2.8, and 2.7 for students new to Boston and 2.5, 2.4, and 2.3 for students with prior Boston exposure. Dental school and divinity school students were the least likely to claim that cost and availability of housing had not been at all important in their decision to attend Harvard (30% and 33%, respectively). This statistic was much higher for law and business school students (50% and 59%, respectively) and in the 40%–45% range for other graduate students.

The ideal initial housing choice was a Harvard studio/one-bedroom apartment for 29%, a two-plus-bedroom Harvard apartment for 14%, a one- or two-room single Harvard dormitory for 26% of the respondents, and private housing (mostly apartments) for 25%. Exhibit 3 contrasts these results with current ideal housing solutions (i.e., for the average graduate school insider)

Importance of Housing Features and Other Preferences

Ratings obtained for the different housing features are presented in Exhibit 4. The exploratory trade-off questions (in section F) revealed specific preferences. Rent vs. time (to get to campus) split almost equally (48% found rent, 52% time to be more important in choosing housing). The trade-offs against space yielded more striking results (37% space, 63% time; 28% space, 72% rent).

Students overwhelmingly preferred studying at home (73% against 21% for the library, 3% for common-area carrel, 3% for common-area lounge). Within the home the living room/common area was most preferred as a study place (59% against 37% for the bedroom and 4% for the kitchen).

Regarding transportation, when asked to rate (on a 5-point scale) which mode they would find acceptable for a 15-minute commute, students preferred walking (4.4) over the Harvard shuttle (3.7) over walking to the MBTA (3.4) or bicycling (3.2). The lowest scores were received by driving (2.7) and driving plus MBTA (2.0). Sixty-two percent of respondents currently walked to school. In terms of reported maximum individual monthly rent (last question of the survey), 28% of respondents could pay between $600 and $799 per month, nearly three-quarters between $400 (only 2% reported less than $400) and $1,199.

Impact Highlights

To gain perspective on the 2001 survey experience, Keller found it useful to recount major areas where survey results had a significant impact on decision making.

In Graduate Schools

The results on a per-school basis, perhaps the most often-used set of data that emerged from the tabulation, enabled each school to assess the specific habits and expectations of its population and to assess in a disaggregated format the scope and impact of the mounting crisis. The realism of various complaints about life on campus could be checked against “hard” data and compared with the fate of fellow graduate students at other schools. Deans felt better equipped and more motivated to seek a voice in decisions regarding new housing facilities that might (or might not) appeal to their student populations. The School of Education, for example, could use the survey results to assess whether its students might welcome a move to the new Allston campus. Exhibit 5 presents some of the more striking cross-school differences with respect to the housing experience.

A report specifically focused on international students had less impact as international students mostly distinguished themselves in terms of initial search guidance requirements.

Design Choices

Perhaps the greatest contribution of the 2001 survey had been to highlight the critical importance of cost and location relative to space. The preference for the studio/one-bedroom apartment as an upgrade over the single dorm room was also striking. These findings precipitated HPRE’s decision to create, within walking distance of targeted graduate schools, ambitious new studio concepts. Developed with Jonathan Austin of Cambridge-based Austin Architects, the so-called double studios would economize on space while giving students more of what they wanted most. Keller explained:

The double-studio concept is a cross between a dorm and an apartment. Priced like a discounted two-bedroom apartment, it came down on a per-student basis to a rate slightly higher than a dorm room (but less than an apartment) while offering more space and privacy. The concept came straight from the 2001 survey results, complemented by focus groups for testing purposes.

Fifty-two such double studios were introduced in HRES’s most recent project, an award-winning renovation of the building at 29 Garden Street in Cambridge, originally built as a hotel and most recently used for housing as well as the Harvard Police Department. The newly renovated building included 13 studios, 28 small double studios with one bathroom, 24 large double studios with two bathrooms, four two-bedroom and six three-bedroom apartments, and ample common areas. Floor plans for the two available types of double studios are presented in Exhibit 6. The “small” double studio with its single bath made very economical use of space. At 480 square feet it occupied two-thirds the area of a two-bedroom apartment. It was priced at around $750 per month per person. The per-person rent in the “large” double studio was $50 more due to the second bath and additional kitchen space.

The double-studio concept also introduced new perspectives on flexibility in design. Combinations of double studios (that could be rented as double studios with one bath, or as a traditional one-

bedroom apartment) and single studios were planned for the Longwood medical area (near Harvard Medical School). These units could be adapted in the future, should the demands change, into traditional one-bedroom apartments or (by merging a double studio with a single studio) into large two-bedroom apartments with a living room. Such adaptability had not previously been conceivable (e.g., one could not transform three individual studios into a two-bedroom apartment).

A Path of Learning

Another commonly cited impact of the survey was to generate other surveys and other activities focused on understanding demand. For example, focus groups were organized to (1) understand students’ basic mind-sets and vocabularies as applied to complex issues such as the trade-off between location and price, (2) obtain a user’s critique of design ideas that had emerged from the survey in terms not only of apartment design but also receptivity to more remote locations (such as Allston Square, one mile from Harvard Yard’s Johnston Gate entrance), and (3) stimulate discussion on specific topics such as campus-access alternatives

Challenges for the 2005 Survey

Incremental Changes

The first order of business with respect to the 2005 survey was to update and improve the 2001 questionnaire, as follows:

- Change or remove questions regarding detailed preferences for amenities, when these preferences could easily be predicted or no longer required feedback.

- Select questions for which repeat measurement would make most sense.- Choose new price sensitivity measures. Whereas the 2001 survey had focused on current

rental price per unit, HRES’s new products were more likely to be priced per person.

Everyone present at the meeting was expected to voice personal views about other aspects that needed improvement. However, the biggest challenge was to provide insights for the Allston Initiative.

New Context: The Allston Initiative

Harvard had acquired property in Allston in several waves. The most significant part of the property was the area opposite the Harvard Business School parking lot known as Allston Landing North. An aerial photo is reproduced as Exhibit 7. The vision for Allston was described in a publicly available document. The overview of “Envisioning Allston” read as follows:

It is here that Harvard envisions transforming the existing blighted and chaotic landscape into an entirely new urban, community, and campus environment. The University’s vision for the future of Allston Landing is fundamentally different from that which exists today. Where hundreds of trucks now blight the edge of Western Avenue, Harvard sees an active and animated urban boulevard.

Where a sea of broken pavement now extends across the area, the University envisions a network of campus green space composed of trees, grass, and pathways. Where today the local neighborhood is confronted with industrial activities incompatible with residential quality of life, Harvard imagines a neighborhood fabric rewoven with new housing. And where old warehouses and open lots now send a message of underutilization and disinvestment, Harvard envisions an entirely new academic precinct.

In December 2003 Harvard president Larry Summers asked 70 faculty members, students, and staff to participate in a set of task forces charged to evaluate all aspects of the Allston vision, including “Allston Life,” which covered culture, housing, transportation, and retail. An outcome of the report was to study the graduate student market in more detail.

Graduate houses One of the report’s specific recommendations concerned documenting student demand for a graduate house model. The concept was inspired by the example of Harvard’s undergraduate houses and MIT’s Sidney-Pacific Graduate Community, a house of 749 graduate students and four headmasters opened in fall 2002

The idea was to combine efficiency-style units with abundant community spaces and regular activities. The graduate house common areas, unlike those of graduate apartments (where common areas consisted only of a lobby and laundry facilities, with perhaps some extra lounges or study rooms), might also include floor lounges, group kitchens, group study rooms, music practice rooms, an exercise room, a game room, and multipurpose rooms for social events. HRES’s Graduate Student Housing Survey was viewed as an appropriate instrument for assessing this demand.

Housing composition Another consideration had to do with the vision of a university not as a mere collection of specialized schools but as a locus of intellectual exchange among scholars and future professionals in various fields. The university’s physical planning committee had ruled that “all new housing should be developed and managed as a pooled resource open to graduate students and faculty in all schools.” This view sometimes conflicted with the programmatic needs of schools that expected their students to interact frequently with one another. More concretely, it would be challenging to balance the desire to build housing in close proximity to each school campus, to have housing with varied school composition, and to promote interaction among students of the same school. What did students think about this issue? Could survey research be of help with respect to the decision on composition? Danahy commented:

Even if the survey revealed that 70% of the students prefer their apartment complex to be filled with students from the same school, or the opposite, there is a challenge in integrating student preferences with other factors that determine housing policy such as the budget- and public-approvals process. As well, it is challenging to use current student preferences for housing that won’t take shape for another 10–20 years.

Housing types Another domain of decision making had to do with the types of apartments to build. What if current demographic and living choices were transient after all? Could the survey

predict the desirable apartments of the future? It was believed that flexibility and adaptability might be better than prediction in that domain, but the question remained open.

Design Decisions

Based on an analysis of the most (and least) useful aspects of the 2001 survey, what design guidelines should be adopted for the 2005 version? What should be kept, what should be changed?

What questions could be added that might lead to important input for the Allston Initiative?

Given the new context, how could HRES continue to proactively represent the voice of graduate students in order to shape graduate housing at Harvard in the most useful manner? What piece of research might be most useful in complementing the survey?

Confronted with the practical difficulty of exposing students to reasonable alternatives and obtaining valid and robust preference measures, the design team was proposing to examine graduate student life in greater detail (e.g., dining and entertainment habits, forms of socialization, and so forth). A quantified picture of graduate student lifestyles would certainly provide worthwhile information for planning. But would that be enough? According to Danahy:

The challenge for the 2005 survey is to ask useful questions so the survey will continue to be used for a long time by decision makers who are confident that they can rely on our data. People have to look back at our work and recognize it was useful to shaping decisions