to think University students without particular needs do not need an en-suite shower room?

[LindorDoubleChoc]

I'm so surprised that University Halls of Residence now offer this as an option to more or less all their students. What the hell? How many of you are indulging your offspring with this poncery and why? (exceptional needs aside of course).

When I went to Uni in the dark ages of the 1980s no one had an ensuite. Almost no one had a wash basin either. Is it a money making exercise?

New build houses are the same. Not every bedroom needs separate washing/bathing facilities. The first world's gone mad!

I love it! I'm up for sharing pretty much any space but a private bathroom is so good, I can't think of a single reason it isn't!

Not sure why you seem so set on uni students not needing en-suites. There’s lots of things we have now that we didn’t years ago. We may not need them to survive but we all move forwards. You don’t like them or want to pay for them for your children don’t but it’s free choice and there will be many parents and children paying out on en-suites. They’re only built to meet growing demand.
Live and let live.

@flutterby1 I remember it differently, with student grants (not loans) and housing benefit for students

Needtochangename Absolutely. It certainly was a different world. Grants not loans, no fees, ‘un-meanstested’ unemployment benefit (in cash in a little envelope) every holiday, with zero conditionality and literally no questions asked, and nobody knew or cared that you were also boosting your income by working behind your local bar for cash, housing benefit etc. A lot wrong with this in retrospect, obviously, but attitudes were very different then. And most importantly, a fraction of children stayed on for A levels, compared with today, and an even smaller fraction went to university at all.

When I got my first job in 1985, with an annual salary of £9,000, i had a typed and signed letter from the bank manager, thanking me for my letter telling him about my first salary.

Enough with the rose tinted reminiscing, obviously! Next year I will be 60, so this is all ancient history.

I had an en suite bathroom over 20 years ago!

Interestingly I went to a LARP event a couple of years ago were the accommodation was used by students the rest of the time. It was bloody expensive (a hotel would have been cheaper) and I had to share the room with a complete stranger (luckily she was very nice and actually female, as I was asked which gender I'd prefer sharing with.) There were toilets/showers like you'd find in a camp site/train station, so not very luxurious and very open. I put up with it for the sake of what I was doing (pretend wizard school) but I wouldn't like it for months at a time. Glad to hear some students have better provision!

Pure fiction. Balderdash. Bollocks. and so on.

Dd visited one uni which had studio flats which she was quite keen on the idea of (and they weren't massively expensive)...so then she won't have to share a kitchen or a bathroom! We call her the princess at home but considering the price of accommodation at some other unis if she wanted it, I'd be ok with that

When DD was in halls all rooms in the complex had en suites. The student complex also had a roof top bar, gym, indoor cinema and a yoga garden. It was really lovely and we didn't begrudge her a bit of luxury, she'd worked bloody hard to get there.

I agree. It may not be how things were done back in the day but let us be glad for them! Sharing a bathroom and toilet is grim.

My dd has an en suite.
I don’t care what you think of that. Improving on what I had as a student is good and the idea you have to suffer somehow is utter drivel.

I think it’s fine to share if the parents can’t afford to support, but absolutely we paid for our child to have an en-suite. A private bathroom is great and quite frankly given a choice I’d have wanted one. I’d a sink, yes it was fine but an en-suite, your own loo, shower, bathroom is great .

No idea why the op is taking such issue with it,at what point did life become simply about survival and only what you needed.

My shared Uni houses had the grimmest bathrooms. And sharing one bathroom with 5 other adults (strangers) is not fun. If you are paying, then I guess you can tell your kid you won't allow them the extravagance...but unless they live in a shared house then most halls will have this as standard. Seems an odd thing to complain about really!

Some of the older universities have many more shared bathrooms than those which are more newly established. Would that out those who are very pro-en-suite off…even if they were better courses?

For me, it’s just not an issue. I have lived in shared houses as a young adult and shared bathrooms and did it as a student. I know DC will probably live in a shared house after yr1 and will share. He’s not bothered or overly precious about stuff like poo smells. He will just get in with whatever.

Times do move on and new accommodation being built tends to be en-suite. They can charge more for it. In the end, it depends if you want to spend or let your DC have a further £1k ish of debt.

Like lots of things, if you are willing to pay more, you can have nicer things. What’s worth paying for and what isn’t, especially when students are looking to keep costs down, is a matter of opinion.

Probably most would prefer an en-suite to not having one. Whether it’s necessary or affordable affordable is a different thing. It’s another area where you can make some cost savings or increase your bill. Interested to know if parents themselves will be footing the extra cost, or seeing it as coming from a student loan.

I think we need to remember that there are far more students these days who wouldn't have gone to university 30+ years ago - students with mental health and physical issues, which might necessitate a greater need for an en suite.

They build them this way because outside of term time they can rent them out to others. It’s a fairly big source of income.
It’s all pre-fabricated so doesn’t add a huge amount to building costs.

Universities make a good amount if money in the summer with conferences/ tourists etc, the new builds are far more enticing and appealing if they are ensuite and they can charge more. This might be more the case in Universities which are also tourist destinations but it is a consideration for universities when building

DD's halls were used by doctors and nurses during lockdown as they were next to the hospital. They were en suite.

I lived in a halls where two girls shared one bathroom.

Someone racist cunt once came and left a shit on the toilet seat. It was ONLY on the toilet seat so clearly deliberate.

So I’m all for ensuites that only occupiers can access.

I thought of this thread yesterday whilst at an Offer Holder's Day with DS2. He is very keen on having ensuite accommodation. Or at least he was! We viewed 2 halls, both fully ensuite. One had clearly been built that way but the other was older and must have been converted and the usable space in the rooms was tiny as the shower cubicle takes up so much space. The purpose built one was a bit better, but over £1k per year more.
DS1 lived in a non ensuite hall last year and DS2 was imagining he would have a similar amount of space but when he realised that wasn't the case and started thinking about where all his sports kit, guitars etc were going to go in this teeny room he started to rethink things. Different University admittedly, but very similar type of place and not far away geographically, and the new ensuites were just over £100 a week more than my elder son paid last year and even the old converted rooms were £70 a week more! DS2 started to think that maybe sharing a bathroom with 2 or 3 other people wasn't so bad after all, especially when he would have to keep his sports kit in the ensuite and move it out every time he wanted a shower anyway! I can see the appeal, and think it should be an option, but it's not essential for everyone.

I lived in nurses accommodation for a short time in the early 80s. I had a washbasin in my room but the bathrooms/toilets were shared by the whole floor! It wasn’t really an issue.

I grew up in a house with shock horror one bathroom and two toilets and my current home is the same.

I went to university in the early 90s so over 30 years ago and we all had en-suites in my halls (which housed over 3000 of us) - it’s nothing new 🤷‍♀️

Even in the Dark Ages of the early 90s I had an en suite for one of my years at university. It's a good thing, especially for girls.

Not that I am denying they existed, but I would think that ensuite halls were pretty unusual in the early 90s. I graduated in 1989 from what was then (probably still is in fact) one of the biggest Universities in the country. I don't think any of the halls had ensuite rooms and most of the catered halls still had substantial numbers of shared rooms. I, and most of my friends, shared rooms in first year. I visited quite a lot of friends and relatives at their Universities from the mid 80s to early 90s and none were living in ensuite accommodation. I think it was probably a minority who didn't share bathrooms in those days, perhaps newly built halls were just starting to include them?

I would like to poo in peace when I can. Why such a problem?