Which unis to think twice about due to housing shortages or cost in Y2 and 3?

[Windingriver]

DC is using this as one of their filters when shortlisting unis. Durham has expanded so much and student housing not kept pace - we saw the queues outside estate agents in the news last November! Manchester has issues too apparently? Perhaps it would be more helpful if I listed where DC considering and you could flag up if any issues with getting housing in years 2 and 3 of degree?

Warwick
Bristol
Exeter
newcastle
liverpool
exeter
birmingham
sheffield
surrey
reading
nottingham

Thank you in advance!

@RampantIvy it's not ideal no. I did say Durham might not be the best fit for her. She has auditory processing disorder and possibly some other issues and although frighteningly clever and conscientious needs a little bit of extra support. She's doing History which seems to be quite heavy on reading, think 200 page book for 1 seminar. And she just can't keep up. She's been sent in circles between durham gps and durham uni for a formal diagnosis as she had a school diagnosis only and until she gets a diagnosis isn't eligible for extra support. And is just getting more and more upset. Still getting mid 60s for essays so actually is keeping up but feels really overwhelmed.

She's in the middle of an application to Sheffield to do lit and language instead. I'm in year 2 of a lit and Philosophy degree there so she's had a good look at my modules etc. I get 3 hours contact time for each 20 module and the send support at Sheffield seems so much better so we think she will be better of changing.

She was going to leave now and come home, so I said that if she wanted to do that she should find a full time job and pay a bit of board so she reckons she's better off staying in Durham til the end of the year as she's paid for accommodation and catering already. So Durham obviously isn't as hard as a full time job 😁.

Manchester has issues before you even get to year 2
https://www.examinerlive.co.uk/news/west-yorkshire-news/manchester-university-students-fuming-after-25069613
and more issues
https://www.itv.com/news/granada/2023-01-25/students-in-rent-strike-over-mould-and-rat-infested-halls

My dc won’t be applying to Durham or anywhere in London because it’s too expensive and Manchester because of the problems with the standard of accommodation.

Warwick - although being actually in Coventry (with lots of cheap housing stock incidentally) it is largely disregarded as unthinkable by the middle class parents of Warwick University students as being far too low brow. They’d rather trek 5 miles to the rarified air of Leamington Spa. Which has nice gardens and less bothersome diversity and chavs. 🙄

Bristol UWE has a new accommodation block being
built to guarantee all first year students will be on campus. after that there is a lot of student property around. Pricy though but a great place to be.

Bristol and UWE are not the same.

Bristol have several new accommodation halls. No one was housed outside the city this year.

DS graduated from newcastle a couple of years ago (and has never left) had great, reasonably priced houses. Huge swathes of student areas-all very nice. Great public transport.

Great city and fantastic Uni experience. Highly recommend.

I heard in Bristol they were housing students over in Wales at one point

DS1 chose Warwick over Durham partially due to accommodation issues - they said there was a 50% chance of a shared room in first year college, which would have been a deal breaker for him.

Birmingham is a great uni, relatively cheap to live and no housing issues.

My DS is at Lancaster and that’s exactly what I do. He gets the minimum loan. I pay his rent and he manages all other costs from the loan. He also has a holiday job when back home to top up his bank account. He manages fine and even has savings!

To give you an idea of rent in Lancaster. He’s off campus this year in a house with 7 others and it costs £120 a week - £6000 total. Next year it’s going up to £135 a week - £6750 total. They have a really nice house and I think that’s at the upper end of average rents. I know he has friends paying less but they fell in love with this house. They found it through the university accommodation office. They have a website where you can search available properties to give you a wider idea of rents.

https://housesearch.lusu.co.uk/Accommodation

There seems to be plenty of accommodation in Lancaster and relatively reasonable. For comparison my step daughter is in Nottingham and it seems to be a lot more expensive there.

forgot to say - this prices include bills

*those prices

Bristol has been telling students to look for accommodation in Bath.

Re shared accommodation - do universities take anything other than preference into account when allocating shared/non shared rooms? My DS has ADHD and would find sharing v difficult, and I think whoever was sharing with him would find it pretty awful. Is there space to indicate this sort of thing on a form?

Baths quite nice and an easy commute by train I think but still..not the student experience is it

I know Hertfordshire uni had designated flats for asd in the past so worth asking. They can still annoy each other obviously but at least would have understanding

Not helped by the absolute car crash that is Trans Pennine Express and train strikes.
TPE must be the worst train company ever.

There is a good post above from the landlord point of view which I also endorse. The state chose to make letting to anyone uneconomic (eg landlords taxed on profits they do not make because of interest rules in the last few years, expensive new checks, the complicated rules which apply to student lettings but not a letting just to a normal family on homes of multiple occupation). I can understand why the state did that interference in the market to drive out landlords so that more properties are available to first time buyers but it has had a major increase on all kinds of lettings all over the country as landlords did in effect what the state wanted - left the market. Last year alone one of my off spring and spouse sold 3 properties that were previously let out. My sons still let out one small house each to one family each as they live at home but will certainly stop being landlords the second they decide where they want to settle.

On catered halls, raised above, someone asked why would anyone want them. My children found it a good bridge between home (meals provided) and unversity and they typically had breakfast and dinner (on Sundays it was lunch instead of dinner) eg in Bristol at Wills and Churchill Halls. They really really did benefit from that - meeting people, doing down to the dining hall with friends. It was a very important social part of year 1 which worked well for them. It will not of course suit everyone.

On my more general point about its being a pity the rich will congregate where the poor (or those not on the maximum loan of £10k approx) cannot afford, I suppose that is no different from posh comps in leafy suburbs of Surrey where every house cost £1m. I suppose it was ever thus but I did compare my Manchester University accommodation costs in the early 80s with exactly the same block today https://www.manchester.ac.uk/study/experience/accommodation/student-accommodation/search/whitworth-park/. It says from £115 a week on that link. In my day even allowing for inflation since then it was much cheaper. I paid in 1981 £194, £193 and £104 - total £388. I Just put it through an inflation calculator and it would be £1384 today. Even assuming today you could pay 115 x 41 weeks that is 4715. Someone is raking in a lot more profit these days. Back in 1981 I got the minimum grant and my parents had to make it up to the full grant. I think the full grant if your parents were badly off was £526 a year (which is about £1900 today)

Thank you @maudesvagina

Swansea. Loads of cheap accommodation for years 2 and 3. Actually a really great uni too.

@Xenia the difference for me is that good schools exist outside those leafy rich areas. So the students are just as likely to get fab grades and be able to go to any Uni they choose. Except they can't, because of costs. The very poor are ok as Unis offer many bursaries and support funds. The ones who get caught are the lower end of the loan amount, whose parents can't top it up.

Many, many students work during Uni to allow themselves the chance to go to their first choice, but this does sometimes have an impact on their grades. There is no easy answer, but to pretend it's not a factor is not helpful. I think we may live in very different versions of the same world 🤷‍♀️.

I think your dd is very wise to factor accommodation in her choice. DS eliminated Bristol partly because housing is such a nightmare.
He ended up in Exeter. Can't remember what his rent was exactly but he was lucky and found housing that wasn't too bad (as student accommodation goes). We did top up his money by a couple of hundred a month iirc and he did work. Rent wasn't cheap but also not as eye watering as some of the halls of residence. My kids didn't go to private school and we are more normal income I think.
I think you are going to find most uni cities have rip off land lords and expensive housing cos it's a captive market

@Flannagan
York can be expensive. But also has good value accommodation.
First year in halls, en-suite with a weekly college meal was £5600.

Year 2. Private rent within the city walls. £300 pm plus bills. Shared flat.

Year 3 studio with private gym included. Plus bills. His share will be £450 pm.

So really not bad.