Loan system kept students living at home with parents

Students stayed living in the house of their parents for longer after the basic grant was abolished. Before, 33 per cent were still living at home after five years of study, but with the introduction of the loan system this rose to 42 per cent.

From September 2015, new students no longer received the basic grant. That made studying thousands of euros more expensive. Students promptly didn’t move out of their parents’ homes as quickly anymore. Many even stayed at home for their entire study programme, according to new numbers by Statistics Netherlands.

There are more reasons why some students remain living at home: there is a shortage of housing and rents are rising. But still, the loan system clearly had a major impact.

Statistics Netherlands looked at graduates who took five years to complete their studies. How many of them stayed living with their parents throughout that time? There is a clear kink in the graph at the introduction of the loan system in 2015.

Before the loan system, around 40 per cent of male students lived at home for their entire studies; suddenly this became more than 50 per cent. Among women, the figure rose from just under 25 per cent to 34 per cent.

Move out later

Students in higher professional education were always more likely to stay at home than university students. But everywhere the same pattern appears: a trend break appears in the year the loan system was introduced. Previously, 20 per cent of university students and 40 per cent of higher professional education students stayed at home for their entire studies, and this jumped to more than 30 and more than 50 per cent respectively.

Those who do move out, do so later than before. Here too, the figures show a kink: the ‘unlucky generation’ under the loan system clearly started living independently later than the cohorts before them.

Some students may, incidentally, be a bit careless and forget to report their move to the municipality. Under the loan system, this hardly mattered anyway: you no longer received a grant for students living away from home. But the trend is clear. Even the Covid crisis had less impact than the loan system.

Harmful

The National Student Union sees the new Statistics Netherlands figures as confirmation that students were hit hard by the loan system. Moreover, the situation on the housing market has not improved since the basic grant returned in 2023. “It is really harmful that young people cannot take their next step”, says chair Maaike Krom. “Because of the high rents, students have to count every penny to get a place of their own.”

Almost half of current students are still living at home, figures from student housing providers showed last autumn. Because of the housing shortage and high rents, some give up hope: they do not even try to find a room anymore.