More university students moved to university town last year

Last year, for the first time since 2016, more university students moved out of their parents’ homes and lived in student houses or dorms than the year before. In 2020, nearly 26,000 students had independent living arrangements, up from around 22,000 in the three previous years.

These numbers were gleaned from a study conducted by Statistics Netherlands (CBS). CBS stated that the increase seems to be mainly due to the increasing number of students enrolling in universities, which in turn is mainly due to the high number of pupils who have recently passed their school-leaving exams.

Last year, nearly 100 percent of pupils attending vwo (pre-university education) passed their school-leaving exams. Moreover, some of these pupils decided not to go abroad due to the pandemic and to embark on a degree in the Netherlands.

However, the great number of students enrolling in academic degree programmes does not tell the whole story. “The number of students that moved out of their parents’ house to live in a university town did not just rise in absolute terms, but in relative terms as well,” the researchers found.

Amsterdam, Utrecht and Rotterdam

In Amsterdam, in particular, more students chose to live independently: their number rose by 38 percent. For its part, Utrecht also saw a significant increase: 31 percent.

In Rotterdam, too, more university students moved into student houses or dorms in 2020: 2,700, up from 2,400 in 2019.

Leiden and Delft witnessed an increase as well, while in Tilburg, Eindhoven and Wageningen numbers remained stable. Enschede was the only university town in the Netherlands where the number of students renting rooms slightly decreased.

The newly released numbers indicate a break with the downward trend of recent years. CBS feels that the fact that students were less likely to move out of their parents’ homes in previous years is due to the student loans that were introduced in 2015, which made living independently a less financially attractive proposition.