Colleges and universities across the country are working on making it easier for students to leave their cars behind. Colleges can even require that students who are new students to their campuses to leave their cars at home, in order to encourage these students to remain on campus and be more engaged with campus life. Typically, however, first-year students are living on campus and would be well-advised to leave the cars at home — at least until they transfer off-campus a year or two down the road.
More colleges are banning first-year students from taking cars to school, so it might not be a decision your students will have to make right away. Of course, the safer, less costly option is forbidding your student to drive when they are at college, and do not allow them to bring cars to school.
When you live far away from the campus, driving your own car to school can be extremely costly. Many students do not need cars in college, particularly if they do not have reasons to be off-campus, or home is too far to travel to during breaks. As you can imagine, parking becomes an issue for everyone when so many bring cars to school.
Because parking is scarce, some universities recommend that students do not bring cars. Because of limited parking, students living in dormitories are highly encouraged to not bring cars on campus. Parking is extremely limited for students on the university property, and students are encouraged by the university to leave cars at home. For example, in snowy seasons, students may have no places to park their cars.
Students who must take a vehicle on campus, but who are not driving the car on a daily basis, will have to find parking that is available for storing the car (defined as leaving your car in continuous parking at an on-campus lot or facility for more than 24 hours).
If your student from another state plans to stay on campus or off-campus most of the year — including the summer semester — they might qualify as residents, and their auto insurance policies might have to be modified accordingly. If your out-of-state student has their own vehicle and auto insurance policy, remind them to contact their insurer to find out whether their policy needs to be modified for driving while on campus. If your student is still planning on driving and keeping their vehicle on campus, it is important to contact your auto insurer and inform them of this status. Do not forget, if your auto insurance has you listed as student, you will have to check with them to update their details to include having a part-time job.
Once you have considered the factors and decided you want to bring a car, you will want to ensure that the vehicle is safe and legal for you to drive to your college. Whether this is a decision that you and your student have to make in year one, or in later years, you might have to make the decision on whether a car is going to be brought with you to university.
If your college student is considering whether to bring a car to school, it is a good place to start by researching available alternatives. Obviously, some students will need a car anyway, but before you automatically assume a car is a necessity, students should look at alternatives.
If your students already have an accessible vehicle, then a key financial consideration would be parking costs, fuel, maintenance, and insurance. You will already know just how expensive young drivers can find car insurance, and often, that is just too much for students to afford as they head off to college. The biggest reason students do not bring their own cars to college is because of the costs involved with maintaining, running, and insuring them over the next three-plus years. Keeping a car at university is, thus, incredibly challenging when you do not have the proper amount of money available to budget both the car and school expenses.
If you are dead set on taking your car to college, you may find that you will need to pay for car parks, as most universities will limit or eliminate the amount of parking available for students. Most students prefer to not bring their cars to college, so there are very few campuses with parking available to students, but in addition to not having a lot of spaces, you could save on insurance costs, as well as not being the cheaper cab rider.
Students who live on campus are most likely to get by without having a car since they can get to classes easily, eat in the cafeterias, purchase books and necessities at the campus bookstore, and so forth. However, those who live outside the campus and need to commute to the university may benefit from having a car. Having a car on campus can be an enormous convenience to your daily routine, but only if it overcomes the potential issues of parking, costs, and security. Having a car on campus can be incredibly convenient, especially if you are attending school somewhere not readily accessible via mass transit.
Not having a car on campus could have an impact on students health, there environmental footprint, stress, and definitely on their wallet contents. With easy access to free buses both on campus and throughout Ann Arbor City, most students have found it is generally unnecessary and usually not worth the cost and effort of driving to campus.
Zipcar cars are stored in multiple convenient locations around campus, so students will not need to drive very far for their Zipcar. Zipcar is a membership-based car-sharing program, in which students rent cars for an hour or day, for a student-friendly, low cost. Several car-sharing programs, including Zipcar and Enterprise Car Rental, partner with colleges and universities to make cars available to students just when they need them. You can probably get student-parking-rate discounts, but you need to register the vehicle, so make sure you have the appropriate passes/documentation.
