Photo Guy Ackermans Tenants have no say in who their new housemate is in student houses that assign rooms based on candidates’ registration time. Not everyone is equally enthusiastic about this method, which has prompted Idealis to test the Utrecht model, which uses a combination of registration time and interviews. The ten students with the longest registration time are invited for interviews.
Idealis director Bart van As stresses that this is a pilot for an additional method to assign rooms. ‘The Utrecht model does not replace the traditional Wageningen candidate interviews. We view this as a potential additional method to be deployed in addition to the regular interviews and registration time methods.’ The pilot started when the Costerweg became available in April 2023 and is now also being used for the new Marijkeweg 20 student complex. Although the pilot has been underway for a while, it took some time for large numbers of students to move and, thus, for tenants to really feel the effects of the new system.
More freedom
The traditional candidate interviews allow tenants to select who they wish to invite for interviews. The only condition that applies is that the candidate must be registered on ROOM.nl and study in Ede or Wageningen. A student house can thus select by gender, language or membership of a particular association. The Utrecht model does not offer that degree of freedom. ‘This level of freedom is appreciated by many but is not very fair to those seeking a room who are less likely to make it through the beauty contest that the interviewing system can be. In theory, the Utrecht model is the best of both worlds. Whether it will work in Wageningen is what we aim to find out.’
Fear
The pilot causes quite a commotion among students, tips received by Resource show. There were rumours that the Utrecht model was to become the only model to be used by Idealis. Droevendaal fears tenants who do not consciously choose the Droevendaal culture will come. And how will international students fare if registration time is taken into account? Moreover, at the Costerweg, sometimes only two or three invited candidates showed up for an interview evening, resulting in a rather meagre range of candidates from which to select. At the Costerweg, students were also able to register as a group, for example, members of the same association, does that put an end to association houses?
This pilot is an additional model
Bart van As, Idealis director
Van As underscored that Idealis has no intention of doing away with the traditional interviewing model. ‘This pilot is an additional model. If we decide to implement it, it will be for houses that are currently filled based purely on registration time rather than for those that interview the candidates. For example, some of the star-shaped buildings where rooms with shared facilities are assigned based on registration time. At the same time, we also want to keep assigning rooms based on registration time for a portion of the rooms we have available. It’s all about the right balance.’
Feedback
Van As understands the adverse impact on student association houses within the student complexes. ‘But Idealis rents rooms to students and PhD candidates, not associations. We were clear from the start that we intended to use this approach for these complexes, but students may have gotten the wrong idea because they were permitted to form a group to register for rooms.’
But students may have gotten the wrong idea because they were permitted to form a group to register for rooms
Bart van As, Idealis director
The pilot will continue until the end of this year and is currently being evaluated, says Van As. ‘We are interviewing tenants, caretakers and student caretakers.’ There are, indeed, instances where few candidates show up for an interviewing session. ‘This system may work better in Utrecht because there is a greater shortage of rooms there. Here, the supply and demand are more or less balanced.’ After the pilot ends, Idealis will decide if, and if so where, the Utrecht model will be applied in Wageningen.
Box: Ideal rooms in numbers
Idealis holds some 6,275 student rooms and studios. Some 1,875 studios are assigned according to the ROOM.nl ranking. Of the 4,400 rooms with shared facilities:
• 2,560 rooms are assigned according to ROOM.nl ranking;
• 1,510 rooms are assigned through the traditional candidate interviewing method;
• 330 rooms are assigned according to the Utrecht interviewing model
Some 24 per cent of the total number of available rooms is assigned through the traditional interviewing model, 71 per cent based on the ROOM.nl ranking, and some 5 per cent according to the Utrecht model.
