In an effort to count more college students in the census and boost funding for higher education, many colleges and universities are urging their students to fill out census forms.

Census data is used to help determine levels of federal funding to be distributed around the country. Census responses influence policies ranging from how many congressional representatives a state has, to the amount of federal funding states allocate for higher education.

Results of the student count could have a dramatic impact given the massive funding cuts to higher education wracking the nation’s colleges and universities and the financial aid reform bill pending in the Senate,

At some schools around the country, resident assistants in dorms have taken the lead in getting their residents to fill out the forms. Other schools have provided on-campus drop boxes for completed forms. The boxes are supposed to help students remember to fill out their forms, and make it easier for them to turn in completed ones.

A group of communications majors at the University of Maryland designed an extensive campaign to get students to fill out the forms. The group worked with the UMD student government to set up tables in the student union to raise awareness about the census. They also urged local landlords to send out mass emails to their tenants, urging them to participate.

“A lot of students don’t know, but answers from the census help allocate $400 billion of public funding to public institutions, such as hospitals and schools…based on how many people live in an area,” said Sammi Liang, a senior American studies and communication major at UMD. Liang was interviewed by the UMD student newspaper, the Diamondback.

Census officials said that college students are frequently a difficult demographic to track because many do not fill out census information. According to the officials, students often assume that their parents are supposed to handle it, or that they have to be a homeowner or permanent resident to be included in the count. Some people also have privacy concerns, although by law the Census Bureau must keep all collected information secret, even from other government agencies.

The administration at Johns Hopkins University is supporting a campus-wide push to get students to fill out the forms. The student newspaper at Johns Hopkins, the JHU Gazette, looked into how the census will work on their campus, and what the administration is doing to push it forward.

The census contains 10 questions concerning a “person’s name, sex, age, date of birth, race and origin,” according to Census officials interviewed by the student newspaper the JHU Gazette. The officials say the form should take no more than 10 minutes to complete.

“We take the census count very seriously, so we ask that when students receive these forms, they fill them out and get them returned promptly,” said Susan Boswell, dean of student life at the Homewood campus.

Robert M. Groves, the U.S. Census Bureau director, wrote on his blog that college students are responsible for filling out census information because they are considered to be residents of the towns or cities where they go to school.
 
Off-campus students will receive census questionnaires in the mail sometime this month, while on-campus students at Johns Hopkins will receive questionnaires in April or May, according to the JHU Gazette. Those dates will vary on different campuses around the country.

Census guidelines consider each address a household. Housemates living at the same address only fill out one census form.

More from the JHU Gazette at Johns Hopkins University
More from the Diamondback at the University of Maryland