Rapidly expanding universities have overwhelmed local communities. How can students integrate?
Thu 19 Dec 2019 02.00 EST
Last modified on Thu 19 Dec 2019 06.35 EST
Wild parties, chaotic flatshares and heavy drinking are viewed with affection as the youthful hijinks associated with university life – but not by everyone. With some universities rapidly expanding following the removal of the student numbers cap, these behaviours are fuelling a growing divide between students and their local communities.
The past year has seen reports describe how residents are “fed up” with noisy student parties in Bristol, how student housing is “destroying the local community” in Brighton and Liverpool, and how wealthy students are pushing up house prices in Durham. Much of the focus is on the student accommodation blocks that have changed some city centres beyond recognition.
There are now 660,000 purpose-built student bedrooms in the UK, a third more than five years ago. With relations stretched to breaking point, there is a growing awareness in the housing market of the need to take responsibility for how students integrate into local communities.
Bristol has perhaps come under the most fire for unchecked student expansion. Its two universities have grown their numbers by 17% over the past five years, prompting the council to warn that housing and other public services are being pushed to the limit.
In response, the University of Bristol has launched a new housing scheme. The LaunchPad project houses 31 students, young key workers and other under-30s from disadvantaged backgrounds, including care leavers and those who have experienced homelessness. The university hopes its partnership with housing association United Communities and charity 1625 Independent People can bring young people together and heal divisions.
“Students have quite a bad name in certain parts of the city,” says Oona Goldsworthy, chief executive of LaunchPad. “We’re looking at how we can turn that round. In Bristol there is massive wealth and massive poverty – and the two worlds don’t meet. The University of Bristol has always been very set apart. If we can build a bridge to those young people who’ve never seen university, maybe they’ll start to see it as theirs as well.”
Located in the suburb of Fishponds, the accommodation includes a room with a bed and kitchen area, along with a communal lounge. Residents have access to university facilities and pay £120 per week for rent and bills, compared to a student average of £160. The scheme is inspired by Startblok Riekerhaven in Amsterdam, where more than 500 refugees and local students are housed together. The scheme is a small pilot at present, but Goldsworthy believes it could be rolled out more widely if it proves successful.
Sheffield city council has also been grappling with growing student numbers and university expansion plans. In its most recent student accommodation strategy, it pledged to promote volunteering and “positive student interaction” to improve relations with the local community.
One recent initiative is a partnership between SheffCare, which operates 10 care homes across the city, and student house search engine Student.com, which automatically enrols students as volunteers in local care homes when they select their accommodation. The scheme, which promotes better community relations and addresses loneliness among both students and care home residents, will be rolled out across several cities in February.
Kathryn Rawling, SheffCare’s volunteer coordinator, says working with students brings considerable benefits. “[The residents] are interested in young people,” she says. “And the students get to be part of the city.”
One of the volunteers is Dmitris Boufidis, a 19-year-old from Greece studying biomedical engineering at the University of Sheffield. “I liked the idea that you can interact with older people because I miss my grandparents,” he says. “I can feel like I’m doing here what I’d like people in my city to do for my grandparents.”
Boufidis went to a tea party at a student accommodation which aimed to match him with residents like Brenda Marsh, a 93-year-old living with dementia. She appreciates how interested the students are in her life story, and the fact they share their future plans with her. “I like to mix,” she says. “It’s the only thing that keeps me going.”
“If you give students the chance to integrate into the local community, they will,” says Dan Baker, a general manager at Student.com. “There’s a huge opportunity to change the perception around these buildings and big groups of students.”
This has been the experience of Unite, the UK’s largest student housing company, through housing a yoga therapy charity, MahaDevi, in one of its Islington blocks since 2017. The charity offers subsidised treatments for people with conditions such as autism, cerebral palsy and Down’s syndrome. Since moving to the larger premises, MahaDevi has expanded its work from 43 to 98 families; student residents volunteer and help fund the centre through paid yoga classes.
MahaDevi is a cosy space that functions as a de facto community centre, where staff serve cups of tea to students and local residents. Maria Anasanti comes with her 11-year-old daughter Mimi, who has cerebral palsy. “It’s like an oasis. [Mimi] feels so at home here, the minute she walks through the door she’s greeted by everyone,” she says.
“This was a child who they said would never walk or talk, and now she’s chanting in Sanskrit and using her dexterity and fine motor skills. She’s building up to do a headstand, which I never thought would be possible.”
Emma Nicolaou has witnessed similar changes in her daughter, Tyler, who experiences muscle contractions through her dystonia. “We were struggling to get physiotherapy on the NHS,” she says. She appreciates how friendly the students are and, as a single parent on benefits, adds: “It’s the only time you can really mix and feel a part of something. I would be lost without this place.”
The new space, which the charity gained through a competitive tender, has been vital, according to MahaDevi manager Ben Eydmann. “It was becoming increasingly difficult to run safe spaces for people [where we were before],” he says. “We could never have known until we moved here what would happen: it’s just growing and growing in terms of being a community hub.”
The collaboration resulted from an unusual stipulation by Islington council that the development contain space for a community centre. Ali Hastings, Unite’s social impact manager, says the project has changed how it sees its responsibility to the local community. “Our position in the community is far stronger and the relationships are far more positive than they perhaps would have been otherwise,” she says.
She’s now convinced Unite to house two homelessness charities in Bristol, with a third planning application for an arts and culture space in the works. Unite is also working on two community spaces in Edinburgh and the redevelopment of an Elizabethan playhouse in Whitechapel. Hastings observes that while planning applications typically receive mixed responses from residents, these have been met with more enthusiasm.
The partnership was a first for the council but Kevin Turner, a housing manager at Islington council, suspects it will replicated elsewhere. “Local councillors were really positive that it would be used for local community. I think it does help mitigate that image of lots of student housing, especially as the charity is working with disabled young people,” he says.
Eydmann believes the students benefit as much as MahaDevi and the local community do from the partnership. “We offer them quite a unique experience,” he says. “We’ve had students bring their parents here and introduce us to their mums and dads.”
