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...

I don't want to say but evidently nowhere near your DS.

DD is 200 miles in one direction and ds 200 miles in another. Seems much cheaper up North ( he is at Lancaster).

https://thetab.com/uk/2024/09/23/its-official-these-30-universities-are-crawling-with-the-most-private-school-students-in-2024-384024

It’s well published the percentages of private educated.
It affects accommodation prices - normal supply and demand. As mum and dad will be paying for accommodation landlords price accordingly especially if in short supply. The unis also know they can charge top price for halls and if new halls are built they are the fancy expensive type with en-suites and swanky common areas as they know they will fill them. Look at the metalworks in Bristol for example that was in press for not being ready for freshers. If you’ve been paying private fees £10,000 a year accommodation is a drop in ocean.

Lancaster has moved up league tables and is now often mentioned as well worth a look. The affordable accommodation and easy access on a main train line is a big factor.

Agree, if you live in London and have paid PS fees, you are likely to have both cash for tuition/halls and also a home that could be used, if money was tight. Currently top London university tuition costings are very similar to London PS fees. Sadly a lot of focus has been levelled at private school fees VAT, when actually a top London university is a great example of paying for privilege - without any VAT.

I imagine London applicants are now more likely to come from London than in the past. I lived in Manchester and went to London - it was a great experience. DS thinks it sounds too expensive in terms of living costs. We’d pay the rent but he’d be paying everything else…

Instead, DS will most likely head north (from the SW). Can’t say I’m not a bit relieved! Absolutely refuses to countenance living at home and going to our local unis (Bristol/Bath), which would certainly be the cheapest option.

We are relatively well off, above cut off for additional loans, and live in the south, cost of uni is a huge concern, you would have to be super wealthy for it not to be I think. We are trying to be quite frugal and put money away. Cut back on holidays, keep going in stressful jobs we’d like to take a step back from, reduce our day to day spending.

With loans not keeping pace with inflation and housing costs increasing so much everywhere I’m not sure what we can afford. DD is in year 12, she doesn’t want to be too far from home. We are an hour away from London and she is currently leaning towards staying at home and commuting in to a London university. But even that would be very expensive I think, and we are right on the edge of a reasonable commute I think.

When I went to university London was out on grounds of cost, so that’s not new, but I was at Sussex and my loans plus working in the holidays meant it was affordable.

We don’t really have a local university, we’re between Reading and Southampton and either would be about an hour on public transport, although a much cheaper commute than into London.

My dc was at a northern state grammar. Literally 2 or 3 students out of 300 contemplated a London University and only one went to my knowledge. These are high achieving students but it just wasn’t realistic, most are on min loan.

Oh FFS that's not what I meant

I am a bright person from the north so yeh I kinda am aware that we exist...I went to a posh Southern university and have stayed there.

It was always suggested to me that I am part of the problem of people leaving to go to London and the south for job opportunities. I regret it quite a bit that I made my life and brought my kids up down here.

I was thinking that if people are now being attracted up North for uni AND the bright people already there stay then there's surely going to be more inward investment and job opportunities and maybe the London centric funding of things like education and health can be broken down.

We are a London family, kids in mixture of private and state. None of the kids or even their friends considered London universities, they wanted to experience another city as they know that they’ll all most likely come back to London post uni

only southern unis considered were Oxbridge or Bristol. Otherwise it was Midlands up: Birmingham, Nottingham, Leeds, Liverpool and Sheffield.

I feel sad that many people can't afford to go to university in London. The universities there are some of the best in the world and offer unparalleled educational experiences.

My DS went to LSE and whilst he lived at home in year 2&3, he lived in a shared room in halls. The minimum maintenance loan covered the rent and he had a decent chuck of extra cash spare. It was catered halls so he got meals provided and for lunch there was someone who used to give out free food on campus.

Min Loan for London is £7400 it’s not going to touch halls costs let alone London living expenses plus cost of travel back home up north.
Dc’s friend is an all 9 at GCSE/4xA* student with offers from Imperial and Oxford and chose Oxford as it was thousands cheaper (has 2 other siblings uni age and min loan due to parents earnings - teacher/nurse)

The only reason minimum loan covered DS's rent was because he had a shared room and a roommate.

It always amuses me that accommodation wise, Oxford and Cambridge are two of the cheapest universities

Its also interesting the impact on the house rental market of having a University in a city.
Lets not talk about the cost of renting in Guildford !!

Are Oxford and Cambridge cheapest as you are paying for the shortest amount of weeks?

This. At my ds’ college, you can live in college accommodation for the duration of your undergraduate degree and he pays just over £4,000 per year for this. The downside of this is he has to move all his stuff out of his bedroom at the end of every term, because the rooms get rented out to others. It’s really not much of a downside if you live within 3 hours of the City and can drive the stuff home for your child, though (there is very limited storage space to leave stuff behind) - it saves thousands in accommodation costs and your child gets to live in the centre of a very expensive city with loads going on in it for students. It’s a chance of a lifetime, imvho - it’s prohibitively expensive for virtually anyone other than an undergraduate to live in the centre of Oxford or Cambridge for 3-4 years.

It would appears so.
Friends who went pointed out that they ONLY paid for term time weeks
(even Christmas and Easter were optional) and of course the terms are shorter.

Was it a few years ago @Cdjs? Cheapest catered shared is ucl is £235 (£9000 a year) or £154 (£6000) self catered.

I went to Cambridge back in the day with a full grant (before loans came in) and it was super cheap. The accommodation with all the food was subsidised and there was college accommodation for all 3 years (in fact for 5 in my case) and the terms being short I could also work a lot in the uni holidays at home. You were not allowed a job in term time. Cost was certainly not a barrier to attending from a poorer background. I actually had no idea that a lot of my friends were from very rich backgrounds until we started meeting up in the holidays and I found out where they lived. That was an eye opener. Up to that point it was like 'Common People' with no-one mentioning they'd been to Harrow!

Yes Oxbridge is cheaper as short terms/ability to live in many colleges all 3 years and bursaries not just for those on max loan.

Yeah Oxbridge is very heavily subsidised so it’s probably the cheapest in the country

Not a realistic option for most - and not comparable with what the vast majority have to pay

If she prioritises self-catering which is less popular and then chooses Josephine Butler or Stephenson which are less popular than the newer builds she has a very good chance of getting one. DS was a first year in 2022 and everyone who put Stephenson as first choice, by the due date, got it.

DDs is £4,800 for 3 x 9 week terms and for first term they said to go 3 days earlier and charged pro rata for those days. She has a locker and can leave some stuff there all year and can leave her mini fridge in room (room is rented out a lot of rest of year). I think it's as it's short terms, easy for them to rent out the rest and they are fairly wealthy. And they aren't supposed to work in term time though can do in the half of the year that's not term time.

Yes but it was 31 weeks only.

TBH that is what annoys me about many of the Unis.

Somewhere like York could EASILY rent out its halls as Airbnb type holiday accommodation over the summer
to generate income, take pressure off the town and enhance the economy
but they prefer to gouge students by charging them for the whole of August.

Way back when, Uni halls (of the red brick variety) were commonly used as lower grade conference venues.