Last year, 90 per cent of bachelor students moved into a room in the city for their studies, but this year, that is down to ‘only’ 70 per cent. That figure comes from research by branch organisation Kences.
Nationally, the numbers look a bit different: last year, 28 per cent of students were living away from home, and this year, merely 13 per cent are. Nearly half of the students indicate that they chose to continue living at home due to the study advance.
The research bureau expects the number of students living at home will only increase in the future. ‘This can have a serious effect on student participation, freedom of choice when it comes to which city to study in and other developments happening in knowledge hubs’, says Kences director Ardin Mourik.
Room shortage
Mourik says this development is still not enough to compensate for the shortage of rooms for students. The students who are most likely to stay at home are first-year students, and students who began their studies prior to the implementation of the loan system and were already living away from home will continue to do so. ‘Furthermore, there is an ever-growing number of foreign students coming to the Netherlands. That means there is still work to be done when it comes to student housing providers’, according to the Kences director.
The RUG has been pointing out the decline in the number of Dutch first-year students for quite some time. ‘One of the reasons we have previously stated is the fact that some students continue living at home. For a university city like Groningen with such a high percentage of students living in a room here, the effect of that is especially notable. That is why we have also indicated that the influx of foreign students completely compensates for that’, says RUG spokesperson Gernant Deekens.