Dijkgraaf. Photo Joris Schaap Two weeks to go before the start of the academic year starts and 100 of the 270 exchange students due to begin at Wageningen in September still did not have a room. Now 30 can share a room in Dijkgraaf.
Each year, WUR reserves hundreds of rooms with Idealis for the new international students, who get priority in room allocations. International exchange students don’t qualify for the priority allocation but that is not usually a problem as there are generally enough rooms on offer through sublets by WUR students going abroad. But this year that system does not seem to be working for many of the new exchange students: about 100 exchange students had still not found a room in Wageningen just two weeks before the start of the academic year.
In July and August, an awful lot of ads were placed on Facebook by new exchange students saying they were urgently looking for a room, says Ingrid Hijman, head of the Student Service Centre. ‘To find out how many people were affected, we sent all the incoming exchange students an email. It turned out that 100 had still not found a room. We realized then that the market was not functioning, because that is a lot.’
Room sharing
Idealis had 15 rooms available in Dijkgraaf. ‘So we immediately reserved them for this group,’ says Hijman. ‘The fire brigade has given Idealis permission to temporarily have two students to a room. That means we will be able to house 30 students in those rooms. We will keep a close eye on how that goes.’ The Student Service Centre has also placed a call on the intranet asking whether staff could perhaps temporarily offer a room to an exchange student. ‘That hasn’t resulted in anything as yet. But even if only one person is able to house one student for a while, that would be great. Every little bit helps,’ says Hijman. WUR students going abroad on an exchange have been sent an email asking them if they would be willing to sublet their room to an incoming exchange student. International student society ESN is also trying to help exchange students find a room with their Roomswap platform.
New problem
Normally, incoming exchange students have no trouble finding rooms through sublets by Dutch students going abroad for an exchange, explains Hijman. ‘Every year, we have about 1000 students who go abroad for an exchange or internship and 400 foreign exchange students who come here. Students who are going abroad sublet their rooms to the incoming exchange students. That system has always worked well, until this year.’ What exactly is causing the problem is not clear, says Hijman. ‘We haven’t picked up signs that WUR students are no longer going on exchanges abroad. Perhaps a lot of sublets have gone to regular Dutch students this year because of the tight student housing market? We have also heard that some private landlords have taken in Ukrainian refugees.’
Whatever the reason, Hijman finds it shocking that 100 exchange students can’t find a room. ‘This is not good news for WUR. Many of these students will probably decide not to come to WUR after all. That is particularly annoying for the individual students, who will have to completely rethink their study plans. Some of them have already sublet their own room in their home country. It is also bad for our relations with our partner universities. If students from our partner institution can no longer study in Wageningen, our own students will no longer be welcome at the partner institution. Of course we hope this is a temporary problem but that is difficult to predict because we don’t really know what is going on in the subletting market.’
