[ad_1]
When did it become acceptable to treat university students as a cash cow, milked for absurd rents that bear little relation to the underlying cost of the accommodation?
Rents charged to first-year students have risen at around double the rate of inflation year after year. The hundreds of thousands of fresh undergraduates heading into halls this September can expect to pay well over £6,000 for even basic single rooms. At the start of this decade, the typical student rent was equal to just over half the maximum available cash they could obtain in loans and grants. Today that has soared to 73%, and it continues to rise.
Authoritative research by the National Union of Students and Unipol has tracked rents at all the major universities for many years. The conclusion? “Rent rise rates have exceeded RPI throughout the timeline and become increasingly detached from the index.”
Today’s university students don’t know how unlucky they are. When I arrived at the University of York in 1981 the weekly rent on my single study bedroom in Derwent College was, as I recall, £9. Inflation calculators suggest that’s equal to £38 in today’s money. The rent now, for the very same room? £136 a week.
During my years at York, it was almost unheard of for a student to take paid work during term time. Now, according to York’s student union wellbeing officer, Steph Hayle, it’s almost unheard of not to – and all because of the rent. “Many have to work full time in retail every week to pay their way. It’s having a horrific impact on their wellbeing and academic attainment. I meet students every day with issues that, when you look into it, comes back to accommodation.”
She says that there are students at her university who are on the maximum possible loan and grants, who, after paying rent, are left with just £14 a week to live on.
In my second year, we were no longer offered rooms by the university and took our chances in the private market – and paid much more. Today? In a complete reversal, the private market is now cheaper than the university-supplied market. “Everyone wants to move off campus just as soon as they can, it’s so much cheaper,” says Hayle.
It’s hard not to conclude, as she suggests, that from a student point of view, university-provided accommodation has turned into a money-making exercise.
At UCL in London I spoke to Matthew Lee, who, in his first year, says he had little choice to pay nearly £200 a week for his accommodation. He’s joined rent-strike.org, which is behind Cut the Rent campaigns now springing up across the country.
Its manifesto blames the switch in university funding from government subsidies to tuition fees and loans. This has resulted in universities competing for students and looking for ways to make their income more secure – “and increasing rent is one of these ways. However, these rent increases are totally unjustified–especially as many university managers are given ever higher pay packages as well as shiny buildings and installations to impress incoming students and businesses”.
Lee estimates that his university is making a profit margin of around 35% from its student digs – a figure UCL hotly denies, saying that it “does not seek to profit from its student halls, with any surplus reinvested back into the estates to ensure fit-for-purpose accommodation”. It added that at UCL-owned halls, rents start at £103 a week and there are 10 options below £200.
York issued a similar response, saying it has rooms that start at £108 a week, that thousands of students benefit from bursaries worth £2,000 towards rent, and that its rents are “fair but competitive”.
Yet just 30 miles away in Bradford, rents for students are just £86 a week. Do many universities charge not according to cost, but according to how much they can get away with? Probably, even though the cost of rooms such as mine at York were amortised decades ago.
Over the last decade there has been a luxury student accommodation arms race, built mostly to attract rich international students. When I arrived at university, everyone on campus paid roughly the same rent and had roughly the same rooms. Today, Britain’s universities mirror what has happened to society since then, with arguably grotesque levels of inequality emerging. Poor? Here’s the manky old rooms from the 60s. Rich? Here’s the penthouse suite, a private dining experience, on-site gym and all the facilities of a five-star hotel. Just sign a contract for £20k a year.
What can be done? Ultimately it comes down to huge issues around university funding. In the meantime, the NUS reckons caps should be introduced, bringing rents back to no more than 50% of the maximum loan and grant – so around £4,000-£4,500 a year. But it will probably take a lot more rent strikes before the universities see sense.
[ad_2]
READ SOURCE
