Housing shortages are increasingly cited as barriers to degree completion. Using a 17-year panel of 1,208 U.S. colleges, I estimate the effect of dormitory expansions on retention and graduation via within-college differencing models, confirmed by stacked difference-in-differences. Large expansions do not affect first-year retention but raise four-year graduation by 1–2.3 percentage points; effects grow with expansion size and cohort exposure and reflect higher total completion rather than re-timing. Mechanism analyses find no rent-market spillovers, pointing to campus housing access as the primary channel. Expanding on-campus capacity is a tractable, institution-controlled policy to raise graduation rates.
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