SCANDINAVIA: Soaring student numbers squeeze housing

Scandinavian universities are reporting severe housing problems due to a steep increase in student numbers, and some institutions and parents are turning to innovative solutions.

In Bergen, Norway, newspapers have published several stories about parents helping their children to invest up to two million krone (US$323,000) to buy a flat in the city centre. Monthly rent for a university room is about NOK3,000 a month, while the private sector can cost double that amount in central Bergen.

Many 'baby-boomer' parents are financially well-off and regard the investment in properties in student cities as a lucrative one.

But a debate on the increasing social differences between students from wealthy families and those with lower incomes has emerged in the press, coupled with arguments that such investments are creating an unhealthy dependency among the young.

This investment strategy is also not normally available for international students in Scandinavia.

Those in Copenhagen are angered by the housing chaos, the Copenhagen University Post reports. One Estonian student had to find accommodation across the Øresund Bridge in the Swedish town of Malmø, since she could not find a room in Copenhagen or surrounding districts in Denmark.

The university provides a housing list but available rooms are quickly snapped up by desperate newcomers. Also, the capacity for housing international students in Copenhagen was reduced earlier this year when some administrative positions were axed to save money.

At Lund University, in the south of Sweden, just over half of 2,000 international students who applied for a room for 2010-11 were offered one. Those who did not succeed were offered places at a vandrarhem (hostel).

Pro-rector Eva Åkesson said more students had to commute to Lund from neighbouring districts. Because of a budgetary surplus, Lund is able to start constructing housing for 1,000 students. The government has approved the plan as the university can build the accommodation as a property business - the first time this has been possible in Sweden.

Lund provides acute overnight accommodation for students who do not manage to find a room. It has 8,345 rooms for a student population of 46,000 and a waiting list of some 2,500 Swedish students.

A report by the Central Stockholm Student Organisation claims that the number waiting for a student flat has more than doubled since the autumn of 2007 to 52,000 now. The current waiting time for a student room is 20 months.

Stockholm University's student exchange, which allocates rooms to international exchange students, has only 450 rooms at its disposal and some 700 exchange students to house. The head, Karen Granevi, pointed out that the university therefore could not house 250 exchange students, and added that several had been cheated out of money while trying to secure a private room.

Granevi told the Stockholm University Post: "Some of these students might sleep in provisional housing some nights, but every day we see exchange and masters students desperate and sad over the situation."

The coalition government has promised to build 4,000 new student rooms in the next session, while the Social Democratic opposition says it would construct 3,000 new rooms for students.