Do all uni students have cars nowadays?

[ShadowPuppets]

We live in a residential area next to a university. We actually viewed and moved during uni holidays but we knew about half the houses are student lets. Not a problem, they’re generally very respectful if a little naive (one lot left out loads of extra black bags on bin day one week and I passed them on the street as a collective totally mystified as to why the council hadn’t taken them when they’d taken additional recycling the previous week 😆) The odd party but it’s generally predrinks so they’re done by 11 before heading into town.

But they all have bloody cars!! These are normal postwar semis where, if you pave over the front garden (as most have, including us), you can get 2 cars on the drive. Would serve perfectly well if only one or two to a house drove. But all the houses are being run as 4/5 bed sharers (3 beds, plus they use the dining room as a bedroom, and then an extra if they’ve done the attic). So you get 2 on the drive and 2/3 on the road which makes the street a total rat run - cars parked both sides making it super narrow, up on the pavement so you can’t get a buggy down, rucking up the planting on all the verges etc.

We only run one car so other than the precarious driving getting on and off the road, it only really affects us when we want to have more than one guest over, which is basically never (and I guess if we ever do want to do this we’ll do it in uni holidays when it’s quiet). But I just can’t get my head around all these students having cars of their own! If you have student DC do they have their own?

Back when I was at uni late 00s, the only students who had cars were either 1st team sportspeople (who needed to get out to matches), or vets/medics who needed to get to placements and might not be able to use public transport. DH had a car at uni due to a sick parent and needing to get home quickly at antisocial times and remembers being bribed constantly by people for lifts with shopping because they didn’t fancy walking back from Tesco 😂

Has it really changed that much in 15 years? Some of these cars are really nice as well, next door has a 20 plate Ford Kuga and the other side has an old but very pretty Mazda convertible. So there’s every chance this is jealous speaking 😆

This is a commuter town btw - we’re under a mile from a train station which gets you into London in under 40 mins. So hardly the middle of nowhere!

I left uni in 2014 and when we moved into private housing from halls lots of people either got their cars from home or bought a banger. The road up our street was chaotic.

My Uni child has a car, but she is a medic and yes, she needs it to her to placements 😁

I reckon a lot more Uni students have cars now, but they will tend to keep them at the parental home unless 1) the public transport is shit or 2) free parking is handy.

I pay £100 a month for my child to park safely at Uni and I certainly wouldn't unless she needed it.

You could campaign for residents parking permits where only 1 or 2 are given to each house. A lot of the Uni city streets I know have those.

Sympathies as my friend lives on a student street and it's pants when trying to visit her.

My DS had a car when he was a student as he worked for a year before he went to Uni. However, as he was at Uni in a city he didn't take his car with him. It was just as easy (and cheap) for him to catch the train to/from home to Uni and walk/bus in the city. 2 of the 5 of them in his student house had cars (one was a mature student) - but the medical student didn't.

The expectation level amongst students has really gone up in general. Halls are a great example, as they were very very basic when I attended Uni (late 90’s/early 2000’s). Taking a car was just not an option.

Do you live in Leeds, op?

When I lived there it was like this. Most just seemed to use their car as an extra wardrobe and to take a trip down to sainsburys a 5 minute walk away 😐

I had a car at university in the 90’s but neither ds drives yet so no card.

DS2 is in London so wouldn’t be possible anyway, ds1 is in Oxford where the halls have no student parking so non starter for him too.

We only have parking for one car at home and the street is full so not looking forward to when they do decide to learn to drive and get cars!

I had a car at uni. I used to to get to work as it turned out by the time I got public transport it cost me over an hour of my working pay! Also it was a godsend to get shopping as carrying back up a hill bags was exhausting (30 min walk uphill!)

I was at university at a similar time to you, and 2/5 of my house had a car. There was never a shortage of someone to give you a lift. This was in a well connected city centre. All cars were at least ten years old though.

My DS doesn't and nor do any of his friends. There is no parking for students except disabled students at his hall of residence, and everything is within walking distance anyway. Even when he moves into a house next year it won't be worth it as there's no parking for students on campus either, so by the time he has paid for and walked from the nearest public carpark he'll be better off getting the bus or just walking anyway.
But on average, yes, I think a lot more students have cars than they did in the past, and better ones too. When I was at University only the most well off students had a car, and even most of them were old bangers. These days even the 6th form carpark at my children's schools has brand new cars in it, and my DD's flatmate when they were students drove a Mercedes. My DD was very much the poor relation in her Fiat Punto which actually wasn't a bad little car, and far better than anything I had until I had been working for quite a few years!

I've had 3 go through University.
1 had a car, The other 2 didn't

Unlike when my siblings and I were at University (between 1979 and 1988 for all of us), when 3 of us had cars and only one didn't.

So, on my very small anecdotal evidence, fewer now do.

I have 2 at uni right now. Elder dc bought a very modest car in second year. Parking is a huge challenge, as all the student houses are terraces without off-street parking, and with rooms arranged as the OP describes. About 50% of residents appear to own cars. Which reflects my family situation, because younger dc, in first year, in halls with very little student parking available, has no intention of buying a car and doesn't see any need to do so. I think younger could afford to buy a car because they have good savings, but I don't know whether they could afford to run it.

0 in my child's student house or for her friends at the same university (campus university in small city, most students live in the city a few miles away from campus but use the buses). The street they live on is 90% student rentals and now fully parked up. She has a few friends from school who drive to other universities but only a very small percentage of them do.

All my DC’s friends left their cars at home when they went to uni and taking a car to my DC’s campus was actively discouraged. The uni offered a good deal on a local bus pass.

Yes it's common now for most students to have a cars. Gouncils need to build more parking as towns were not built for as many cars.

But instead (at least round our way) they are deliberately not doing enough parking spaces in new developments to encourage people to cycle.

Ironically it's the ones that need a car most that miss out on the space (long commute so home later than everyone else)

No. Neither of my DDs had cars at university. Neither even started to learn to drive until a few years after university. One has now passed her test but doesn’t have a car. Most of their friends can’t drive as well. That’s typical, among their friends anyway.

Tbh with all the train strikes after Christmas, actually I would be at all surprised if many many late students didn't drive them back to Uni after the holidays.

Lack of decent and reliable public transport will have a huge knock on effect.

I finished uni (as a mature student) a couple of years ago and yes, I had a car. I lived in during my first year then commuted (~1 hour each way) for my second and third years.

I needed it to get to work which was in my home town, and my mum has some chronic health problems that can flare up very badly so I needed to be able to get back ASAP.

Most of ds's friends at uni commute and while many do have cars they bus in as it is free and parking is difficult.

I'm a student in a uni town, nursing and needed mine for placements but in the shared housed I have lived in 5 and 7 people I have been the only one with a car.
Its the same for some of my neighbours- big student filled hoses and 0 cars. I have to drive a lot of people to our big lidl.
Parking is still a nightmare though- even if every house has one car that would fill up our street.

My youngest child went to university in 2020. Neither of her older siblings took their cars to uni, mainly because of parking challenges. We hadn’t pictured in advance that she would take her car but she started during the first year of Covid and so I insisted that she took her car so she could come home whenever without using public transport. Of course she’s used to it now and couldn’t live without it.

When I was 17 in the mid 2000s everyone in our sixth form learnt to drive and had a car, so I would be very surprised if Uni students didn’t, especially nowadays.

Cambridge (and I think Oxford) unis don't let their year 1-3 undergrads have a car in the town except under very specific circumstances. I think older undergrads eg medics can but probably need permission from their college.

My son is at college and has a car so he’ll take it with him to Uni. About half his friends at college/uni have cars.

I’m surprised by all these 18-year-olds both having cars and having passed their tests. That’s unheard of among my DDs’ friends. No one learnt to drive while still at school. Mine is the only one who has had any lessons -and she started to learn aged 23. No one has a car, even now.

Probably area dependent. I grew up in a rural village which had one very patchy bus service to an equally dull town. You'd need at least one more bus and probably a train to get to somewhere worth going. The vast majority started driving lessons as soon as possible after their 17th birthday and were insured on a parent's car if they didn't have their own after passing their test.