Samantha Levine Blog 5

Samantha Levine
9/29/09
11:11pm

Samantha Levine
9/25/09
Current Event Five
On Friday, September 25, 2009 in The Times, based in London, UK, Laura Dixon wrote the article Students turn to wifi and flat screen tvs as digs go upmarket. In the past, going away to college meant sharing a bedroom with one to three other girls or boys, sharing a bathroom, kitchen, and laundry room with the hall, and having little to no privacy with anything (including what one wanted to listen to on the radio or even watch on television). However, this article is about how the people attending college within today’s generations’ undergraduates have a different living standard, which leads to students paying more in rent and fees, and expect better living standards then the previous generation(s). In London, “several high-profile luxury student studios, with wi-fi, a flat-screen TV and even a dishwasher is part of a new trend in university living: accommodation for the posh student”.
In the past, private accommodation consisted of up about 2 per cent of the full-time student accommodation market, however today the figure about five times the amount and is closer to 10 per cent. Some people such as Philip Hillman, a partner at property consultants King Sturge and specialist in the student accommodation market feels that the change within college student preferences might because it has “… something to do with the PlayStation generation. Shared bathrooms is an anathema to today’s students”. An example of a student overpaying for cost of living is a twenty-three year old female named Lowri Wynn Morgan. She paid £65 a week for a shared student flat during her undergraduate degree, but after moving to London to take the bar vocational course at City University.
Due to a big increase of students attending college and more overseas students there is a serious shortfall in the amount of living spaces. David Pank, the Yorkshire regional chairman of the estate agent Manning Stainton, “said that now students have the option of high quality private halls, there is an increased pressure on landlords to raise their game”.
http://property.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/property/rental_market/article6846250.ece