Appendix 2

 

Off-Campus Student Residency Patterns

 

In January and February of 2006, a survey of undergraduate and graduate students was conducted by the Western’s Division of Housing and Ancillary Services.  Of these, there were 2,183 off-campus undergraduates and 475 off-campus graduate students who responded, which represents approximately 9 % of all students living off campus.  Student enrollments, excluding those in residence and those registered as Adistance learners@, were 28,686 in Fall 2006.  The response level to the survey was large enough to allow Western to develop projections of the actual residency of all students, in the City of London, by geographic region.

 

Table 1 presents the residential living patterns for both graduate and undergraduate students across the City of London.  The city has been divided into 8 districts, as indicated in the table (see also Figure 18). Within the Western periphery (defined as North of Oxford between Adelaide Street and Wonderland Road) we find 54% of the undergraduate students (~ 13,400) and 42 % of the graduate students (~ 1,580). Table 1 indicates that the next most populated region is the ALondon Central@ (defined as the CPR tracks to Southdale, between Wonderland and the Thames River, excluding downtown).  This district has about 4,000 students (~14% of the student population).  This is followed by the ADowntown Core@ where we find nearly 11% of the student population (~ 3,200) where for the purposes of this report “Downtown” is defined as bounded by Oxford Street, the Thames River, Bathurst Street and Adelaide Street.  Except for London Northeast and London Northwest (with a combined ~ 19 %) the remainder of students is spread thinly over the rest of the city.

 

A comparison of the residency patterns of undergraduate and graduate students shows a difference in only two districts. A larger proportion of undergraduate students live in the Western periphery than graduate students, 54 % and 42 % respectively.  The reverse is the case in Central London, where larger proportions of graduate students than undergraduates are found to live (22% to 13% respectively).  All other districts attract approximately the same proportions from each group.

 

Table 2 looks in more detail at the Western periphery.   It divides the periphery into quadrants roughly centred on the Western campus (see Figure 19).  As noted above, slightly more than half of the students live in this district. Almost all of the students are found in the southeast quadrant (between the Thames, Oxford and Adelaide) and southwest quadrant (south of the Thames and Gainsborough above Oxford and east of Wonderland). It is notable that the undergraduates tend to choose the southeast and the graduates the southwest.  About 80% of the undergraduate students living within the southeast quadrant live in the area close to Western bounded by the river on the north and west, by Victoria Street on the south and by Waterloo Street on the east.  Given that future growth in student population at Western will occur with graduate students, it seems reasonable to anticipate that most of these individuals (and their families) will locate outside of this area and more likely appear in the central and downtown sections of the city.

 

The impact of students outside the Western periphery district is substantial.  A total of approximately 14,000 students live in other districts of the city and about 3,200 live downtown.  As mentioned above this number is anticipated to grow as the numbers of graduate students grow.