Why do I see the same housing cost for on- and off-campus?

In Penny's College Funding tool, institution-specific costs and cost breakdowns are provided from the College Scorecard/IPEDS database. For the 2024–25 version of this dataset, 438 schools published the same housing-and-food amount for on-campus and off-campus living. Others publish only one value, in which case we fall back on that value for the not-provided value.

Of the 2,716 schools in the dataset:

Among the 438 with equal housing, 367 also publish identical “other expenses,” so switching between on-campus and off-campus does not change the cost breakdown at all. The other 71 keep housing the same but change other expenses, so the total still moves: for example, George Mason ($3,667 vs $9,091), Virginia Commonwealth ($6,344 vs $8,486), and the University of North Georgia ($3,790 vs $4,430).

The largest schools with identical on-campus and off-campus housing, by undergraduate enrollment are:

• University of Central Florida
• Purdue University-Main Campus
• Michigan State University
• Indiana University-Bloomington
• University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
• Florida State University
• University of Washington-Seattle Campus
• Oregon State University
• University of Arkansas
• New York University
• North Carolina State University at Raleigh
• University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• University of Southern California
• Georgia Institute of Technology-Main Campus
• Boston University
• University of Virginia-Main Campus
• Northeastern University
• Cornell University
• Syracuse University

There is even one school, the United States Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point, New York with neither housing amount published.