Someone in our newsroom once noted the worst thing about owning a car sometimes is finding a place to park it. That seems especially true in the winter here in the Upper Peninsula when we are faced with mounting snow and overnight parking bans.

The issue of where to put your car once you have reached your destination can become an even bigger problem for college students.

Colleges make an effort to create aesthetically pleasing and walkable campuses. Parked cars on any campus, especially those with a high number of commuters, are a reality that needs to be managed.

According to a recent study conducted by Inside Higher Ed, students across the country are more likely to say there’s not enough parking than to be satisfied with the amount of parking they can find close to university facilities. Sixty percent say there are simply not enough places to park.

Nearly half of the students surveyed in the nationwide study say they have to park far away from their destination, and over 75% say they have to pay to park on campus.

Northern Michigan University officials says the campus has adequate parking, but that’s not the perception of students according to a recent Mining Journal story.

Students, who are required to pay $150 for an annual parking pass, say they can spend more than 15 minutes looking for a parking spot some days, especially for those who commute to campus, a recent editorial in the school newspaper opines.

We tend to agree with students who say the parking infrastructure itself could use a second look.

Michigan Tech University in Houghton just added parking meters in some areas of its campus, and we were hard-pressed to find any complaints about MTU parking on during a quick social media search.

Although campus size and layout would play into how students and staff feel about their parking options, we hope Northern is paying attention to a debate that has been going on for decades.

NMU commuter Maggie Solomon told The Mining Journal: “To find parking, you have to get there 15 minutes early. That doesn’t even make a difference because everyone’s still in class,” she said. “Really only five minutes before your class where everybody starts moving and parking starts happening, but you still have to waste all that time looking. And often you have to park really far away and you’re still late to class because you have to walk all the way across a parking lot that’s nowhere near your building.”

We also think it’s possible that any forward-thinking green-minded school of higher learning might want to disincentives using a car to get to and around its campus. Making it easier to park on-premises would increase the university carbon footprint.

Either way, in the eyes of some students, the situation isn’t great and needs to change. Parking problems can lead to perception problems. Perhaps when tackling its next major building project, the university will look for comprehensive feedback on the parking issue.