Warning re Uni Accommodation: Exeter

[WIWIKAA]

I know many parents are aware of accommodation shortages and the often outrageous costs involved but I wonder if they aware how bad it has become.

My DC firmed Exeter and achieved grades to secure the place. The accommodation offered under the ‘guarantee’ was an off site private provider at a cost of over £10k for 44 weeks. This has happened to many students. Of course they make it work, many have to, however I do think there needs to be more awareness.

Exeter halls are ££ anyway however this is at least £2k on top. If your YP gets the min loan it’s +£6k that they or their parents have to find before living costs etc. Plus once you’ve signed your tenancy there is no option to move into campus halls.

I know this isn’t just an Exeter issue, there is another thread about Warwick, however it was a shock for us and very disappointing for DC. So when your YP is choosing a uni look closely at accommodation!

They just got rid of L7 apprentices....

@FeduplandlordI appreciate your thoughts but this thread is mainly aimed at new students being prepared to not be given on campus accommodation in year one and instead being offered swanky private residences at outrageous prices all organised by Exeter so they can honour their accommodation guarantee.

Yes, these students will have to find accommodation year 2 onwards and that’s a whole other thread and something they will be expecting and be prepared for. My older DC started looking for year 2 accommodation in Oct/Nov of their first year!

There is another thread today on Exeter problems though this on location rather than cost. It is worth knowing about for future applicants.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/education/5399772-exeter-university-accommodation?utm_campaign=thread&utm_medium=app_share

I have said it on HE threads before – it is important to look at accommodation costs, I agree OP.

I agree with a PP btw that it is more of an issue for YP getting the max loan. Say you are at Nottingham where all on-campus accomm is catered – it will probably use most of your loan.

There's an issue here with HE becoming more and more only for richer families, sadly.

I disagree tho @WIWIKAA that cheaper accomm is at lower grade unis. My DS at Lboro paid less than £5k for his first year halls room a couple of years ago. Accomm at Newcastle and Sheffield for example is a lot cheaper than £10k pa.

Bristol is £££ for private accomm, as is Bath. But plenty of other great unis have cheaper rooms available. I see @Limeandsoda2023 says the same – I agree Brum, Leeds, Manchester as well as those I mention – also Notts for private accomm once not in halls – are cheaper.

@Feduplandlord They do have apprenticeships for 18 year olds. Just not for mature adults doing post degree or another degree. Fair enough in my view. Apprenticeships were meant to be for a first degree at 18/19 so let’s hope numbers available increase.

No, didn’t mean to sound aggressive but there will be a point when universities take commuting or local students, as they do abroad. It’s very common in Italy and France for example. We have a history of leaving home for university.

Plus the cheaper cities don’t always have the best universities for the subjects chosen. Or even do the subject! Eg Sheffield is top 10 for engineering but not for law. You would choose Bristol for law over Newcastle as it’s a top 10 (LNAT) and Newcastle isn’t. Bristol also beats many for engineering and not everyone wants a northern city or a campus with not much near, such as Loughborough. Cheap though it might be. Again didn’t do DD’s courses.

Students applying for accommodation in a timely manner should get it but it’s over supply of students for the mid priced accommodation that’s the issue. They haven’t got the overseas rich students for the expensive accommodation so that’s what’s available. Plus uk incomes are squeezed so dc are encouraged to put down the mid to lower priced halls. Students in y2 and y3 tend to want to fall out of bed into lectures. Going further out is often cheaper. Even in Bristol. It’s a big city.

We simply have too many students. This year tariffs have been lowered again at many RG and RG plus unis and over population is the result. The financial model is the issue and we desperately need a rethink. Lots of halls could become much needed housing. O

There's always been a two tier higher education system in the UK. It was clearer when there were universities and polytechnics. Just renaming the polys "universities" did them no favors because they are the ones now having to make severe cuts to humanities and language courses that originally they didn't offer because they were more vocational - teachers ed - etc.

@clary I think many parents where it’s the minimum loan are shocked! DN on max loan got a bursary as well. Rolling in it compared to some who had to work. In today’s costs for the hall, they had over £4,500 left for the year, £1500 a term for food and spending. Lots of students get nowhere near that from parents.

Around 15 years ago, accommodation costs were similar to min loan. DD got catered for min loan. Now it’s way out of kilter but the student cap was lifted and new expensive halls are everywhere.

I always find on money threads that no one compares like with like. Maximum rents are quoted for some places and compared with the cheapest elsewhere. For many prospective students there’s a happy medium at most places. We will become more regional though. Like many countries abroad. It’s a shame if students don’t aim high though due to money.

Expecting uni accommodation costs to increase £100 in two years is naive. Or am I misunderstanding? We all know how much utility bills have increased recently. I've estimated a 10% increase in accommodation costs for my daughter each year.

What I meant was that if you get the max loan, there won't be much money available from parents, so uni may be out of the question in some places. Whereas if a family is better off, then the min loan can be spends, while parents pay accommodation. A friend has a DC in Bristol next year and they are paying their £10k house share.

I think your last post is a bit simplistic – yes Bristol probably ranks higher for law and yes not everyone will enjoy being a student at Lboro, but for engineering Sheffield is excellent, and Leeds is a good uni for law I think? My point is and always has been, look at possible accommodation costs when considering which uni.

Yes I am quoting the cheapest halls (eg at Lboro, where there are also £££ catered option) but at least these are a possibility. Some unis have only quite expensive accommodation.

I gather from anecdata here and IRL that Bristol (where I was at uni in the dark ages, so I am not anti-Bristol) is very expensive for private houses. But I know people with DC in shared private houses paying more like £6k pa not £10k, in places like Leeds, Manchester, Brum, Leicester, Lboro, Newcastle – all good places to study depending on what you are studying.

Newcastle and Sheffield just a couple. Would probably say reasonable rather than cheap, though.

One of my dc is at Newcastle, his halls were £5400.
The next one is at Aberystwyth and his were £5800 and the non-en-suites were about a thousand pounds cheaper.

Student loan and accommodation cost is absolutely ridiculous. So many parents can’t afford the top up to full loan, let alone over and above it.

The income metric is too black and white e.g the child of a single parent with high rental costs in the South East could be entitled to the same maintenance loan than a child of two parents still together, have paid off their mortgage, and have the same gross income between them as the single parent (and between two it would be a higher net income). Yet who is more likely to be able to afford to financially assist their child?

The only good thing about it is that it forces students to work and that experience is invaluable when it comes to applying for jobs after graduation.

There should be a rule that if universities are advertising guaranteed accommodation it needs to be within the max student loan by a certain amount or percentage imo.

This is not true. It is only for 22 year olds plus.
They still exist for school leavers.

It was me who asked whether you meant to be so aggressive and good to hear you didn’t.
It would be good if we could recognise the many different situations our YP face and the choices they make.

In that spirit, can I reiterate again that for many families in the Uk the option to commute to Unis has always been a consideration.

And again, I never said the “cheaper cities always have the best courses” and of course no YP would apply to a university that doesn’t do the course they want! I never suggested they should or would!! But given the difference in rankings which emerge amongst the many different universities ranking tables, I think it is perfectly sensible to encourage YPs applying next year to consider whether a university nominally ranking 2 or 3 places ahead for their subject or overall ranking offsets the very real difference in accommodation costs for the three years.

And if it is oversupply of students then that is because unis like Exeter are taking loads of students via clearing which they can’t accommodate. Which I think is a red flag of which future applicants should be aware.

Shared bathroom, self catering at Exeter and Sheffield are the same price.

on the topic of commuting to uni I think this is also a symptom of the housing crisis, many more students would probably be willing to compromise on uni choice and live at home if there was more of a chance of being able to move out post graduation

Yes, it doesn't have to be like this.

One of my dc is studying in Germany, where there are no tuition fees and just semester contribution of €300, which includes being able to use your student card to access free travel on all local and regional transport throughout Germany.

Dc has a big sunny room in a hall of residence, at a cost of €280 a month, including bills. And once you have a room in student accommodation you can stay in it for as long as you're enrolled on your course - no need to move out every summer. This is in a big city comparable to Birmingham or Leeds, not some rural backwater.

DC was considering coming back to the UK to do a masters, but a quick look at the costs has put the kybosh on that idea. I am boggled by the costs involved in attending uni in the UK.

Another thing to look at is how much time the student needs to actually be there. When my DD started her course at Oxford Brooks we found that she only actually needed to be there 2 days a week, and had those been consecutive days, frankly she might just as well have done B&B one night a week as we did not live all that far away. She was driving home for most of the week but paying for accommodation for the whole term.
I know there is the whole argument around getting stuck into uni life, but there are a lot of courses where students are not getting their money's worth, both tuition time or accommodation.

Another thing to look at is how much time the student needs to actually be there. When my DD started her course at Oxford Brooks we found that she only actually needed to be there 2 days a week, and had those been consecutive days, frankly she might just as well have done B&B one night a week as we did not live all that far away. She was driving home for most of the week but paying for accommodation for the whole term.
I know there is the whole argument around getting stuck into uni life, but there are a lot of courses where students are not getting their money's worth, both tuition time or accommodation.

It’s a reflection of what a shit show this country is. Government stopped funding universities so they are all financially screwed so have had to increase housing costs. Then sunak made it harder for international students to apply so the unis are even more financially screwed.

the off campus accommodation will not be run by the uni so they cannot dictate how much it costs but the providers will know they can charge what they like as so many unis now are packing the students in.

I work at a Russell group uni in the north and one big issue is that any students who declares a mental health issue can apply to be put on campus and has to be prioritised or else the uni can get sued for discrimination. The number of students declaring mental health is pretty much doubling every year so universities are desperately trying to build more on campus accommodation while having no money. Often this involves knocking down old accommodation blocks to build bigger but then budgets delay the new build. So there’s hardly any on campus rooms. But unis can’t afford to take in less students. Another issue is rules have changed and a student can declare a mental health issue without evidence such as a medical note, which is probably why there’s such huge increases in disability declarations each year. Universities just can’t keep up with how much it’s all changing.

I agree @Mischancethe amount of time they are actually in uni can be very low. Again this seems to be course dependent - students doing stem courses seem to get much more tuition/face to face time for example therefore getting their moneys worth!

More and more students will have to compromise, in many ways I hope this spectacularly backfires on the unis. I’m actually wondering if Exeter are making some money by guaranteeing private accommodation.

I live in Exeter and I think they are pushing students into purpose built student accommodation to try and return the classic terraced houses from hmo's to family homes again. Property prices here are high due to the lack of supply for the demand.

Well the govt leak/suggestion/proposal reported this week to levy national insurance on rental income is going to push rental costs for students even higher!

Has this govt done or proposed anything to stabilise the finances of universities and students?

They increased university fees early on but that was completely swallowed up by the increases in employers NI and the minimum wage.

Who even is the higher education minister?

Many parts of UK HE are world class and yet it is being left to flounder financially so all they can do as a sticking plaster solution is let in more U.K. students which causes an accommodation shortage and will also dilute the education experience they are offering. It’s shameful.

Queens, Belfast has plentiful good value accommodation for first years and available privately for years 2 &3. GB students get a £2500 reduction in year one plus £500 cash. Total paid last year for shared bathroom self catering for 40 weeks was £1900. (But that doesn’t include the £500 paid into DS’s bank account by the university so actually £1400). It has gone up a little bit this year.

Of course you do have to pay for flights and checked luggage but you get a lot of that for the difference in accommodation price.

I think next year he is paying £5000 plus bills for the full year in a shared house organised in January or February. It isn’t the highest ranking university for all the subjects but it does have a good reputation and a lot of the brightest kids from Northern Ireland go there.