WILMINGTON — The University of North Carolina Wilmington is continuing its overflow housing practice in the upcoming school year as it expects to enroll around 275 students more than beds available on campus.
READ MORE: UNCW over capacity for second year, campus plan includes 1 dorm over next decade
This represents around 10% of the incoming freshmen class. As customary, freshmen are required to live on campus, though since 2021 UNCW has also mandated sophomores live on campus, too. The university has so far assigned 3,011 students to rooms for the upcoming year but lacks capacity. This is the third consecutive year the university will have to turn to overflow housing.
UNCW continues to enroll more students each year, with UNCW’s fall 2025 projected approximately 20,000 students, nearly 1,200 more than fall 2024.
UNCW’s enrollment grew by 300 students between 2022 and 2023. Half was made up by out-of-state students, in which the university received the largest over-enrollment penalty in UNC System history for exceeding its nonresident student cap of 18%. In November 2023, it was sanctioned $4 million for its ratio reaching 27%.
Information about overflow housing — which UNCW refers to as “expanded” housing — was relayed at the UNCW Board of Trustees meeting on Thursday, though not in a planned presentation as had occurred in the two years prior. Trustee and Student Government Association President Skyler Stein asked for an update on how many students would be staying in overflow housing.
Kevin Meaney, director of Housing and Residence Life, stood up from the audience to bring up the 275 students. He also said UNCW has signed a lease agreement with another off-campus apartment complex to accommodate them.
A one-year lease was signed in February, for 80 beds at the Cottages at College Acres. Floor plans range from three bedrooms to four, each with their own bathroom and prices range from $875 to $915 per bedroom, non-inclusive of utilities.
UNCW charges students $10,194 per semester, which breaks down to $1,019 for 10 months, inclusive of utilities. Based on the rent UNCW is paying the Cottages of $860,736 per year, UNCW is actually paying $10,496 per bed.
The Cottages are now one of the most expensive housing options for UNCW students, behind the university’s other off-campus lease, Plato’s Lofts. UNCW has been leasing 216 beds at the Randall Parkway complex since January 2024. Students assigned there pay $11,194. On-campus housing rates range from $6,194 in UNCW’s oldest dorms, with three or four roommates, to $10,886 for a single room in a new dorm.
UNCW also charges students who have to be moved into lounge spaces due to overflow, starting at $3,097 per semester, or $6,194 per year — the same amount as those in traditional rooms.
“Some of this is actually pretty nice, having converted some smaller lounge spaces into double occupancy,” Meaney said Thursday. “We will be using some of our other lounge space, as well as some of our larger double rooms as triples.”
UNCW didn’t confirm how many students would need to be housed in non-traditional spaces on campus. It has 299 off-campus leased units, all full and enough to cover the 275 incoming first years. However, there were an excess of nearly 200 students last year, and some of them will need to be placed in overflow housing again as well.
The upcoming school year will be the fifth in which UNCW requires sophomores to live on campus along with freshmen. It is only one of three UNC System schools to have the requirement, including UNC Pembroke and the UNC School of the Arts.
Port City Daily asked the university to comment on if it plans to rethink its sophomore requirement and if its off-campus leases were a sustainable practice; it did not receive an answer by price.
The university has plans to build more housing, though only one dorm was included in its 10-year master plan. The dorm was discussed at Thursday’s meeting. The university plans to replace Galloway Hall, formerly UNCW’s oldest residence hall that was torn down in July 2024, with a new dorm with a 520-bed capacity.
The five-story facility is expected to be 20,000 square feet in the former footprint of Galloway. The board approved the footprint of the building at Thursday’s meeting, with the design aesthetics coming back for approval at the October board meeting.
The board questioned what they viewed as an odd shape.
“We want to stretch it out so, as much as we can, students get a decent amount of daylight versus shadows in the rooms,” Associate Vice Chancellor for Facilities Mark Morgan said, noting the avoidance of a wide, fat building (like Galloway). “So we really worked through a lot of different shapes, trying to stay with the symmetry, with Georgian architecture overall, and give the best experience overall for the students.”
[Ed. Note: A previous version stated the associate vice chancellor for facilities was Mike Morgan. The correct name is Mark Morgan. PCD regrets the error.]
Reach out to Brenna Flanagan at [email protected].
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