The classrooms are full. The sidewalks are busy during passing periods. But once class ends, it can sometimes feel like everyone suddenly has somewhere else to be.
Students grab their Richie’s coffee, pack their bags, and head toward the train station, parking lot, dorms, or apartments. For a place that is supposed to be the center of college life, Temple University’s campus can feel surprisingly empty at times.
As a college student myself, I’ve started noticing this more in my own routine. There are days when I come to campus for class, grab something to eat and leave without really spending much time anywhere else. It’s not necessarily because I don’t want to be on campus. Sometimes, there just isn’t much keeping me there.
So, where did all the students go? For some students, the answer is simple: home. Commuting can completely change the college experience.
When a student must catch a train or bus after class, there is less opportunity to casually hang around campus, meet up with friends, or attend an event that happens later in the day. Instead of having a few extra hours to kill between classes, students may plan their schedules around when they need to leave.
Sanaa Fisher-Young is a second-year Tourism and Hospitality major, born and raised in Philadelphia. “Commuting makes the most sense for me financially. I only stay on campus because of the friends I find the time to hang with. Due to our mixed schedules, I may not stay on campus at all after my classes and head straight home to rest.” Fisher-Young said. She noted that she stays in the Charles Library a lot to complete work and study with her friend, Kya Summers, whom she met during their freshman year.
Housing can also play a role. Students who live on campus may have more opportunities to treat campus as their home, while students who live off campus have another place to spend their free time. When your bed, kitchen, friends and everything else you need are somewhere else, staying on campus for hours after class may not feel necessary.
And then there is safety. For students who have evening classes, work late or simply want to study on campus after dark, feeling comfortable on campus can affect how long they choose to stay. Even when students want to participate in campus life, concerns about getting home safely can make leaving early feel like the easier option.
With an increase in emails warning students to take safety precautions around campus due to reports of criminal activity, some students may feel more hesitant to stay on campus once the sun goes down. As concerns about safety become part of students’ everyday campus experience, the question becomes whether these warnings are also changing how—and how long—students choose to spend time at school.
But the disappearance of students from campus isn’t necessarily about one single problem. College students are busy. Between classes, jobs, internships, homework, organizations, family responsibilities and trying to maintain some facade of a social life, there are only so many hours in a day.
Sometimes, leaving campus is simply the most convenient option. There is also a difference between being on campus and actually feeling like you are part of campus.
A student can attend every class and still feel disconnected from the larger college community. If students aren’t staying after class, attending events or spending time in shared spaces, it becomes harder for those spontaneous college moments to happen.
You know the moments: running into a friend you haven’t seen all week, deciding to grab food after class, sitting outside talking for hours or randomly joining a campus event because you happened to walk past it. Those moments are difficult to plan. And if everyone is constantly leaving, they become even harder to find.
In my opinion, social media doesn’t exactly help with this disconnection. Online, college can look like one long montage of football games, late-night study sessions and spontaneous friend hangouts. In reality, college life can look a lot more like checking the class schedule, putting in your headphones and figuring out the fastest way home.
Freshman year, I fought so hard to stay on campus because I believed in having that “full college experience” and wanting to connect with others by staying on campus. This year I had to make a tough decision and decide to commute, which initially was not ideal at all for me.
I thought I’d have a major disconnect from my peers and wouldn’t be able to juggle everything in my life, while still wanting to be involved on campus. While it’s not realistic or in the cards for everyone, I think making the friends and connections I did freshman year helped a lot and pushed me to branch out, no matter my circumstances.
Still, students haven’t necessarily stopped wanting a community. They may just find it somewhere else. Some students spend their free time with friends at their apartments. Others head into the city, go to work, study at coffee shops, or simply go home and recharge. Socializing hasn’t disappeared; it may have just moved beyond the traditional college campus.
That raises a bigger question: What makes students want to stay?
Maybe it’s better for campus programming. Maybe it’s a more comfortable space to hang out between classes. Maybe it’s affordable food, safer transportation, or simply having places where students actually feel like they belong.
College is often sold as an experience that happens on campus. But for many students, campus is only one part of their lives—and sometimes not even the biggest part. Maybe the question isn’t really, “Where did all the students go?” Maybe it’s, “What would make them want to stay?”