Accommodation cost impacting university choice - very troubling for institutions like mine

[Tulipgardens]

Name changing for this and wondering whether any one has stats. My sixth form students used to put down unis like Bristol, Bath and Exeter but, over recent years, no longer. Newcastle, Sheffield and Leeds now top choices. London unis nowadays a complete no-no. It has been a marked shift...

Not my experience of Oxford or Cambridge. I think you are misunderstanding what they mean by a lottery. I’m not aware of any college having a totally random selection process. Colleges will have several price bands for rooms. You can, in my experience, at the very least indicate the price band you are willing or able to go up to and may end up with a less good (ie cheaper) room, but I don’t think someone who says they want the lowest band of room is ever going to end up with a massive, expensive en suite bedroom. Freshers generally get the least choice - ie what is left after other years have chosen - but it’s never the expensive rooms left over, anyway. It’s far more likely to be the case that, as most Oxford and Cambridge colleges are rather old, someone who wants luxurious, en suite accommodation finds they have to spend the year in a small room with shared bathrooms and access to a tiny, not very well equipped kitchen (eg just a couple of hobs and a microwave) if they want to cook for themselves occasionally, instead. My ds2 even as a fresher actually picked a specific room, not just a price range for a room. Food is also usually heavily subsidised in college - my dss paid considerably less on food and accommodation combined each year than their friends did at other universities, despite ds1 not being keen on self-catering, so even when he had access to a good kitchen in his 2nd year, he more often than not still preferred to eat in college.

Sorry that was me. I forgot that yes actual Oxford Uni is massively subsidised and cheap. And Oxford Brooke's doesn't appear to be unreasonable given the price of housing generally.
Still I can't see accommodation being a worry at either Oxford or Cambridge really.

It’s the short terms that make a massive difference. Everywhere else seem to be min 40 weeks or 51 private halls.

Cost has always been a factor for people I know, it certainly isn't a new thing. If you need to live away from home you have to be able to afford it!