By Tori Negash
Data Points expands on Campus Housing Index (CHI) results to tell the stories behind the figures. This article features data from the ACUHO-I Campus Housing Index (CHI) for the 2024–25 academic year, specifically the residence life (live-in staff), business operations (other policies), and compensation (entry-level) modules. Overall, 175 institutions participated in the CHI for the 2024–25 academic year; however, sample sizes vary by question. Most insights came from 145 institutions that responded to specific live-in staff and policy questions, and 60 institutions shared compensation, professional development, and tenure data for the two entry-level occupations.
Live-in professional staff occupy a unique and essential space within campus housing operations. They are often the first responders in moments of crisis, the primary supervisors of student staff, and a constant presence in residential communities, balancing professional responsibility with the realities of living where they work. Insights from the ACUHO-I Campus Housing Index (CHI) offer a clearer picture of the scope of this work and, importantly, how departments invest in the people who do it.
Across participating institutions, departments report an average of 11 live-in professional staff, each supervising approximately 12 resident assistants. When viewed through the lens of student support, the scale becomes even more pronounced: The average resident-to-live-in professional ratio is 441:1. These figures underscore the breadth of responsibility placed on live-in professionals, particularly when responding to student crises, managing conduct concerns, and providing after-hours support.
This responsibility is further reflected in on-call expectations. Live-in professionals report being on-call an average of 10 weeks per year, reinforcing the continuous nature of the role and the limited separation between personal and professional time. As departments examine staff's workload and burnout, these data points provide important context for conversations about sustainability.
Housing is often framed as a benefit of live-in roles, but the CHI reveals significant variation in what that benefit looks like in practice. Most institutions offer two-bedroom apartments (93%), while just over half provide one-bedroom units (51%). Fewer campuses offer three-bedroom options (17%), efficiencies (2%), or standard rooms or suites (1%).
Policies around who resides with live-in professionals also reveal areas of both progress and opportunity. Nearly all institutions (99%) allow live-in professionals to reside with a legally married same-sex spouse, and 93% permit domestic partners regardless of gender. However, only 81% allow them to live with relatives who are not spouses, suggesting continued limitations for professionals with broader family or caregiving responsibilities.
Pet policies further illustrate how institutions balance operational concerns about staff well-being. Most campuses allow cats (85%) and dogs (84%), while 8% do not allow pets at all. For many professionals, these policies play a meaningful role in decisions about whether live-in work is viable for the long term.
The data also highlight variability in professional expectations for live-in roles. While 48% of institutions prefer candidates with graduate degrees in student affairs, higher education, or a closely related field, only 10% require such a degree. Notably, 31% of institutions do not require a graduate degree at all.
Most live-in professionals (86%) are classified as exempt salaried employees, with smaller percentages classified as nonexempt salaried (8%) or hourly (7%). Given the extended hours and on-call responsibilities inherent in live-in work, these classifications remain central to ongoing conversations about labor equity and compensation.
Board compensation practices vary as well. While 30% of institutions provide a full meal plan and 31% offer a partial plan, 25% provide no board compensation, and 20% offer a cash equivalent or dining dollars. These differences reflect the broader range of institutional approaches to supporting staff whose work frequently extends beyond traditional schedules.
Beyond workload expectations and living arrangements, CHI data also offer important insight into how institutions are supporting live‑in professionals financially and developmentally. For this analysis, the CHI groups entry‑level live‑in positions into broad occupations, referred to here as Occupation A and Occupation B, rather than by specific job titles. Because institutions use a wide range of titles for early‑career residence life roles, these occupational groupings allow for more reliable comparisons, focusing on shared responsibilities (supervising student staff or other professionals) and position requirements (living on campus). This approach provides a clearer, more consistent view of how institutions are structuring compensation and support across similar positions.
Salary data for two key live-in professional roles highlight year over year growth, as well as ongoing disparities in how institutions value and structure live-in work. For Occupation A, the average overall salary increased from $48,625.60 in the 2023–24 academic year to $54,637.21 in 2024–25. Occupation B saw a similar uptick, with salaries rising from $45,960.13 to $47,054.88 over the same period. While these increases suggest progress, they also reinforce the need to consider how salary interacts with institution-provided housing, on-call expectations, and the limited separation between personal and professional life that defines live-in work.
Access to professional development, often a critical pathway to advancement, is highly variable across institutions, with notable percentages providing no funding at all. For Occupation A, institutions reported an average of $1,640 in available funds for 2024–25, with 31% offering no professional development support. This represents a decrease from the previous year, when the average was $1,837.50, and 20% of institutions reported no funds.
Funding for Occupation B followed a similar pattern. The 2024–25 average was $1,591.38, with 25% of institutions providing no funding. In 2023–24, professionals in this role received an average of $1,654.82, with 19% reporting no available funds. These patterns underscore an ongoing tension: As expectations for expertise and responsiveness continue to rise, institutional investment in the professional growth of live-in staff does not always keep pace.
Tenure data provides additional context for understanding recruitment and retention trends within live-in positions. For Occupation A, the average tenure of previous job holders in 2024–25 was 2.8 years, while current incumbents averaged 2.6 years. Occupation B reflected similar dynamics, with previous holders averaging 2.4 years in the role and current staff averaging 2.6 years.
These relatively short tenure periods align with long-standing patterns in residential life, where many professionals transition out of live-in roles after two to three years. Whether driven by burnout, limited financial mobility, or the desire for a lifestyle that provides clearer boundaries between work and home, these trends reinforce the importance of institutional structures designed to promote sustainability and long-term engagement.
While live-in professionals face distinct challenges, they are part of a broader housing and residence life workforce navigating increasing complexity and expectations. Encouragingly, CHI data suggest that many departments are investing intentionally in systems designed to support staff across roles.
Nearly 93% of departments report offering onboarding or training programs designed to support staff in their current roles, emphasizing the importance of preparation in environments where, early in their tenure, staff are asked to respond to high-stakes situations. Beyond onboarding, 90% provide support for staff development, mental health, and wellness, signaling a growing recognition that professional effectiveness is deeply connected to personal well-being.
Departments are also leveraging institutional partnerships, with 80% maximizing university resources to provide ongoing workforce support. This approach helps normalize help-seeking and embeds housing staff support within broader institutional systems, rather than isolating it within departmental structures. Career sustainability is another emerging focus, and 73% of departments report offering opportunities for career progression and mobility within the department or across the institution. For live-in professionals in particular, these pathways may provide alternatives to geographic relocation or role changes that require leaving residential life altogether.
Finally, 62% of departments prioritize marketing housing roles in ways that more fully reflect their scope and responsibility. This emphasis on transparency can help align candidate expectations with the realities of live-in work, supporting better fit, stronger retention, and more sustainable career trajectories.
Live-in roles require professionals to sustain complex work while living where that work occurs. The following perspectives from housing professionals at Texas State University and Seattle University illustrate how institutions are actively translating CHI findings on compensation, professional development, and tenure into day-to-day practices that strengthen culture, voice, and retention.
As Ashtyn Davis, residence director at Texas State, explains, “As live-in/on professionals, we carry both the responsibility of our roles and a deep commitment to the future of the campus housing workforce. As our work continues to evolve, we have an opportunity to move from tradition to intention – through strategic initiatives, meaningful fellowship, and data-centered decision making. Supporting those who live where they work is foundational to the future of campus housing and essential to sustaining retention at our institutions.” This reflection underscores a theme emerging across the Campus Housing Index: Sustainability requires more than adequate staffing or competitive compensation. It demands intentional cultures that affirm the humanity, expertise, and evolving needs of staff.
At Seattle University, this intentionality is woven into the department’s daily operations. Hilary Lichterman, executive director of housing and residence life, and her colleagues emphasize a team-based approach that foregrounds organizational culture and shared efficacy as core strategies for advancing departmental priorities. To minimize hierarchy and elevate shared ownership, staff at all levels – ACUHO I interns, graduate assistants, student staff, and professional staff – are invited to lead interview openings and closings, help shape candidate questions, and respond directly during selection processes.
Project and committee work follow the same collaborative philosophy. Teams co-develop charges to build buy-in while cultivating core professional skills, clarity, integration, and wise use of time, all of which support long-term career development. Organizational culture itself becomes a standing conversation. Leaders regularly name the emotions, values, and aspirations that shape live-in roles and intentionally avoid defaulting to “how it was when we were live-in staff” and instead center the lived realities of current professionals. Curiosity is treated as a critical competency, guiding reflection, interactions, and decision making.
Daily structures reinforce these commitments. Meeting schedules are routinely re-evaluated for purpose and pacing, and reverse agendas often foreground the voices of graduate and entry-level professionals. The intentional use of terminology such as bandwidth, capacity, and space in one-on-one and team settings becomes part of the process of determining when initiatives need to be paused, adapted, or elevated, including during reviews of duty expectations and student employee selection processes.
Beyond formal processes, Seattle University invests in storytelling and connection to humanize the workplace. News in the Nest, curated by Katie Steele (associate director for community engagement and learning initiatives), features thought pieces authored by live-in graduate and entry-level staff and is shared twice per quarter with leaders campus-wide. A departmental Microsoft Teams channel called Random serves as a space for joy and community, from sharing local events to celebrating small moments like an all-you-can-eat ice cream outing downtown.
Together, these practices illustrate data in action: tangible strategies that align with CHI findings by elevating staff voice, expanding professional development pathways, reinforcing sustainable workload practices, and cultivating cultures in which live-in professionals feel seen, supported, and valued. They also provide important context for interpreting trends related to compensation, uneven development funding, and the two-to-three-year tenure cycle often observed in live-in roles. Ultimately, these examples serve as a reminder that behind every data point is a community of professionals balancing work, home, and care and that intentional investment in people remains central to sustaining the campus housing workforce.
Taken together, the CHI data and the lived experiences shared by practitioners offer a layered, at times contradictory, portrait of today’s live‑in professional landscape. The numbers point to areas of investment (such as salary growth across early‑career roles) and areas where support remains inconsistent (professional development funding and the persistent two‑to‑three‑year tenure cycle common in residential life). These patterns alone do not necessarily signal progress; rather, they reveal an ongoing tension between the complexity of live‑in work and the institutional structures intended to support it. The data underscore that sustainability is not achieved through compensation or policy alone, but through an ecosystem of financial, developmental, cultural, and relational supports.
Examples from Texas State University and Seattle University illuminate what this ecosystem can look like in practice. As Davis says, live‑in professionals carry both the immediate responsibilities of their roles and a long‑term commitment to the future of the campus housing workforce. His call to move “from tradition to intention” reflects a broader shift across the field, one where data‑centered decision making, meaningful fellowship, and intentional structures shape how institutions honor and retain their live‑in staff.
Seattle University shows how this intention becomes culture. Through shared leadership in hiring, collaborative project design, open discussions of organizational culture, and practices that foreground bandwidth, capacity, and staff voice, Seattle University demonstrates how departments can translate institutional values into daily habits. Their approach illustrates how organizations can counterbalance the realities reflected in the CHI, such as variable development funding and short role tenure, by creating environments where staff experience belonging, agency, and genuine care. These practices humanize live‑in work and help mitigate the structural factors that often drive early attrition.
As the field continues to evolve, the combination of quantitative insights and practitioner narratives invites housing leaders to reflect not only on what their staffing models are, but also what they signal. Are compensation structures aligned with the depth of responsibility required? Are career pathways and development funds accessible and equitable? Do daily practices reinforce a culture where staff can thrive, not just persist? And crucially, are campuses building environments where professionals can imagine a sustainable future, one in which “living where the work is” remains both professionally viable and personally healthy?
Grounding decisions in both data and lived experience enables institutions to move beyond inherited practices toward intentional, people‑centered approaches. Supporting those who live where they work is not simply a staffing concern; it is a commitment to the long‑term health of campus housing and to the individuals who make residential communities possible.
Tori Negash is the research initiatives manager for ACUHO-I.
