From The Metro:
The ‘popularity and desirability’ of some universities has led to increased living costs for students who are already facing higher tuition fees, a study has found.
The cost of a room in a shared house has risen by three per cent to £67.11 a week on average across Britain, according to the agency's study. But rental costs in Leamington Spa, close to Warwick University, jumped by 16 per cent this year, while student rents in Edinburgh rose by eight per cent and Cardiff, York and Reading all saw a six per cent rise.
The results of the survey come days after university guide Push found that student debts for this year’s freshers will rise by 6.4 per cent to an average of £26,100 on graduation, with London students owing the most. This year’s intake will be the last to escape top-up fees of up to £9,000 per year, which will be introduced in 2012.
You'd expect rents to increase slightly this year, because anybody who can bring forward his studies by a year saves £6,000* fees (do you avoid them for the whole three years, or just the first?), so there'll be a slight increase in the number of students (there is a practical upper limit), so what's going to happen to rents next year, when the number of students falls again and the number of students who stay living with their parents increases?
* Tuition fees are already about £3,000 a year.
Tuesday 16 August 2011
Hmm, but what will happen next year?
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11 comments:
And are they staying with parents due to higher rents or are rents to fall due to absence of students? Wouldn't people other than students come in to take their place?
AFAIK - though they may change it - the lower fees apply throughout the course; a gap year now will effectively cost £18,000.
The issue of accommodation is a frustrating one; students living out have to pay a full year's rent although their courses usually occupy between 28 and 36 weeks, while those in college can pay for only 36 or 40 weeks as the colleges often let the rooms over the holidays.
And as for £67.11; that may be a national average but rents are already often much higher around a university; much of the 'town vs gown' ill-feeling in Oxford, for instance, stems from young workers being unable to find cheap accommodation because it is all taken up by students.
Rooms all over the country are currently standing empty at vast expense to students (or their parents) while city-dwellers face a shortage of accommodation. I think JH is right; other tenants would move into the properties so landliords will keep the rents high.
JH: "Wouldn't people other than students come in to take their place?"
Hopefully yes, it would be a shame if even more homes were left empty.
McH, well no.
Imagine one house with mum, dad and 18 year old potential student; and another young person who has already left home. There is one room available to rent.
If 18 year old wants to move out, then there are two people competing for that room, so it pushes rent up. If 18 year old decides to stay at home, there is only one person who wants to rent the room and so the rent falls.
Here in Oxford there has been a steady increase in student numbers particularly as the former poly has expanded. Rents are high and there are lots of "houses of multiple occupancy" HMOs. There are complaints that HMOs abound, meaning there is a shortage of family accommodation. And there are the usual complaints of anti-social behaviour in residential areas. The Universities appear to be trying quite hard to build new student accommodation. There is a clear benefit for them since they let out the rooms in the holidays for language schools and conferences. But on the face of it this is good for the whole city since it will free up private housing for non-students and bring in more people, presumably spending more money in the locale. However the NYMBYs consistently oppose new University developments. Their blinkered self-interest never ceases to amaze me.
PS. After all the kids moved out of my parent's house they started renting the empty rooms out. I guess that adds another layer to the rental model!
Since all of the new fees will be bloc-paid to the universities and students will only see a bill (= loan statement) when after they graduate; and universities will be giving some of the poorer students cash bursaries now, it is not clear how the change in fees will affect economic behaviour, or rents.
Government are calling them "old regime" and "new regime" students. Old regime entrants (the last will be this year) get all 3 years for £3K/year.
CB, true.
The whole tuition fee thing is completely insane, we'll end up with a system whereby students think they are paying more but most of them end up paying less, thus leading to sub-optimal decision making all round and the taxpayer ends up footing the bill.
I can only assume that the Tories hiked the headline fees with the sole aim of making the Lib Dems look like complete and utter shits, which in turn was a Tory pre-emptive strike to make sure that they would win the pro-FPTP referendum.
Part I - yes, exactly right. Sub-optimal is a serious under-statement! How about the fact that the £9K fees (paid by students from wealthier *families*) include at least £900 per year that MUST be redistributed to students from poor *families*. This is being done by fee waiver for the most part, but also some cash. But by the time the fees are repaid, who knows what jobs the students in question will have or the economic status of their families. But debt payments will effect a transfer of income from one to the other (though at different rates depending on their incomes). Work the impact of THAT out on economic decision-making (let alone university and degree course choise).
CB, and we can rule out that there is any real saving to the taxpayer, so can you think of any other reason why the Tories rammed this through, other than to make the Lib Dems look like complete shits?
By the way, I thought that the £3,000 a year tuition fees seemed 'about right'. That was high enough to discourage non-serious students but not high enough to financially cripple serious students once they graduate.
But why did the LibDems go along with it? Plus, the very worst idiocies of the system were inserted to appease LibDem qualms. But the outcome was certainly to screw them.
£3K a year doesn't begin to pay for the product in many cases. But why a single fee or cap at all? UK higher ed had evolved without individual fees at all and is now wrong in a million ways for imposing them at any level. The structure, practices and very intellectual ground of the degrees and the institutions are unsuitable for a simple single fee. So we get 95% of universities charge the same high fee for all their courses -- simply bonkers. The hope is that in 5 years they will adjust systemically and systematically to the real fees world, which will also include new providers. What we have now is a messay big bang, from which some kind of harmonious order can emerge. But that is being retarded by the worst kind of reactionary statism imposed for the LibDems.
CB: "£3K a year doesn't begin to pay for the product in many cases"
Well not with medicine, but for most textbook and lecture hall based courses, it pays a fair chunk. Besides that is not the point - the real advantage of tuition fees of up to (say) £3k is to discourage the non-serious students from doing non-serious courses, that way the taxpayer gets better value for money out of Higher Education.
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