A familiar September ritual was playing out in many towns and cities across the country this weekend.
In family cars, stuffed with overpacked suitcases and various pots and pans, thousands of 18-year-olds, fresh out of school, were turning up at the hallowed halls of university.
Excited by the prospect of a stellar education and a newfound sense of independence, they waved their parents off with a teary goodbye.
Later in the evening, beers will have been cracked open with new friends and the same questions – ‘Where are you from? What are you studying?’ – repeated in crowded communal kitchens.
Elena Acatalinei should have been one of those students, arriving at Exeter University this week after passing her A-levels with flying colours.
Yet instead, Elena is still stuck in her childhood bedroom in rural Wales, as the dream she’d worked so hard for disappears like smoke.
She’s one of hundreds of students who’ve become the victims of a farcical situation in which universities have offered more places to students than they have affordable accommodation for, leaving them without anywhere to live.
So dire is the situation, that some have even turned to homeless charity Shelter for help.
Jemima Caine feels robbed of the traditional freshers’ experience, having to find a private rental with a group of second-years after she failed to secure accommodation at Exeter
Elena, who was set to study neuroscience, has spent the past month since results day in an even more stressful situation, scrambling around trying to find digs, without success.
In the end, she conceded defeat and was forced to defer her place for a year – with no plans, or job, for the 12 months ahead.
Elena’s mother, Eniko, told the Mail: ‘My daughter had worked so hard to have good A-level results, and then everything just fell apart. She told me it should have been the best day of her life, but it was completely turned around.
‘Why take on so many students? I know financially they need that amount but if that is the case they need to make sure they have enough accommodation that students can afford.’
This desperately sad situation is by no means isolated to Exeter.
Up and down the country, from Bristol and Cardiff to Southampton and Manchester, students have found themselves beset with stress and uncertainty at what should be the most exciting time of their lives.
Some Exeter students who decided to stick with their plans have been left with a 90-mile round trip commute to accommodation in Plymouth – the only affordable rooms available.
Likewise in Southampton, a number of students have no choice but to accept digs a 13-mile bus ride away in Winchester.
Those are the lucky ones: others are racking up hotel bills or resorting to couch surfing.
Students at the University of Southampton have been forced to accept digs in Winchester - a 13-mile bus journey away
There have even been reports of students considering pitching a tent in nearby campsites or sleeping in cars. Some desperate students in Bristol, according to reports, have been referred on to Shelter.
Similarly at Cardiff University, A-level students intending on starting midwifery and radiography courses this month were told on results day they would either have to defer until 2027 or forfeit their place. The students were offered £750, which one sixth-form tutor said was measly compensation for those now having to ‘figure out’ what to do with their lives until next autumn.
The student union at the University of York raised alarm bells in June for incoming students, claiming affordable campus accommodation was ‘completely disappearing’. Its report claimed that only 15 per cent of rooms available to freshers would cost less than £200 a week – a huge decline from 47 per cent last year.
No wonder many, like Elena, feel they have no choice but to put their plans on ice for a year. Who knows how many will end up giving up for good?
So what is going on?
There are multiple factors to blame, according to Martin Blakey, former chief executive of student housing charity Unipol.
One is that universities have been feeling the pinch after a tightening in immigration rules saw the number of lucrative international students attending British institutions fall by ten per cent.
This has left them in a financially precarious position, meaning they’ve been accepting more students with lower grades than ever before. This year saw a record number of British 18-year-olds (262,820) secure a place at university – a three per cent rise on the previous year. It may offer some explanation as to why universities may have been so keen to award more places than they know they could reasonably accommodate.
A-level students intending on starting midwifery and radiography courses at Cardiff University were told on results day they would have to defer until 2027 or forfeit their place
‘You have two reasons for accommodation shortages: one is that there are simply not enough beds and the other is there are enough beds, but students simply can’t afford them,’says Blakey.
‘But universities have never let a shortage of accommodation affect their intake. I think they do have a responsibility to help secure accommodation for first-year students and when they cannot fulfil that responsibility they should make it very clear to potential students that they cannot house them and it will be difficult to find housing in the city.
‘You will get a number of students who will sofa-surf and bunk down with mates while they wait a few weeks, but it is a very fraught way of starting your studies, especially as a first-year.
‘If students cannot find accommodation that is affordable, it is a really bad way of starting your academic career and it is hugely disruptive.
‘If you defer, it must be really disappointing for the students and universities are really just moving the problem down the line.’
The disruption means many students will not have a ‘traditional’ university experience in their first year, alienated from the bond-forming experience of living in student halls.
Like Elena, Jemima Caine, 18, from the Isle of Man, had also placed Exeter as her first choice, but still failed to secure accommodation so, on results day, along with hundreds of other clearing students, she was forced to join the scramble.
She considers herself one of the lucky ones, finding a private rental costing £800 per month with a group of second-years off-campus. But she still feels robbed of the traditional freshers’ experience.
She told the Mail: ‘I felt that I could not get excited about university. I kept seeing videos online about how to prepare for going, but I felt like I couldn’t do that as I didn’t know if I’d even have a place to stay.
‘It is such a shame because leading up to results day I was so stressed. I was so relieved when I got in but that relief only lasted about a day until I got this email. Then I had the uncertainty again about not knowing where to live, or whether I was going to go to university at all this year.’
One parent, whose daughter also had to defer after finding nowhere to live, said: ‘I really do think this is some cynical ploy to make sure they have students already enrolled for the next year.
Universities in Edinburgh, Glasgow (pictured) and St Andrews have been trying to get a grip on the issue after a cross-party report found thousands of students were at risk of homelessness
‘Exeter knew they did not have enough student accommodation and they knew that there were very limited spaces available in private accommodation, yet they still kept offering clearing spaces.
‘Then I found out that some universities are sending students without accommodation to Shelter. I don’t know why they are leaving a charity to mop up the university’s mess. I find it morally incomprehensible that they even suggested this.’
Many would argue that universities have long seen this disaster coming. There is a nationwide shortage of student accommodation, with estate agent CBRE estimating earlier this year there would be a shortfall of 620,000 beds in purpose-built student accommodation by 2029.
Elsewhere in Scotland, universities in Edinburgh, Glasgow and the Prince and Princess of Wales’s alma mater, St Andrews, have been desperately trying to get a grip on the issue after a cross-party report two years ago found thousands of students were at risk of homelessness.
The landscape of students attending university in the UK, however, is continually changing.
While many this year have struggled to find accommodation, a record number have also decided to live at home and become so-called commuter students.
Instead of flying the nest, this year a record 89,510 university students (almost a third) said they intended to live at home during their studies, up from 22 per cent a decade ago, according to Ucas figures.
This increasing trend has mostly been put down to the cost of living crisis, with the latest National Student Money Survey from Save the Student website reporting that on average the student maintenance loan falls short by £502 per month.
This, coupled with the rise of online learning, accelerated by the pandemic, means that being on campus full-time is no longer affordable for many.
Yet despite the increase in commuter students, homelessness among university populations remains a real concern in many parts of the country, with 8 per cent of respondents to last year’s National Student Survey claiming they have experienced homelessness at university.
In the survey, students described months of sleeping on friends’ sofas, or bedding down secretly in the university library.
A report by the University of York's student union claimed that 15 per cent of rooms available to freshers would cost less than £200 a week – a huge decline from 47 per cent last year
‘I couldn’t find accommodation, so I had to sleep in hostels for a couple of months before moving back home,’ another wrote.
Universities have been trying to address the issue by building more accommodation blocks.
The University of Manchester, which was blighted by a huge accommodation shortage for freshers in 2023, has since set out plans for a £530 million redevelopment of Fallowfield campus, hoping to deliver 3,300 units by 2029.
Last year’s demolition of the campus’s Owens Park Tower accommodation block, which housed more than 1,000 students, as part of the renovation plans, has meant that for the time being there are fewer beds available.
That was certainly the experience for the daughter of Emma Haines, a 48-year-old teacher, who this summer secured a place to study Educational Psychology there. Despite applying for accommodation months ago, and getting the grades needed, she found there was no accommodation.
Four weeks later, with the start of term looming, she learned the only place available was a room at Salford University, a 30-minute bus journey from campus.
Mrs Haines told the Mail: ‘This is a really prestigious university where students, like my daughter, have worked really hard to get an offer and secure it as their first choice. You would think they would be able to secure a place in halls. What I find most frustrating is that the university obviously knew there was going to be a shortage and have known about it for some time.
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‘They could have managed expectations and informed her earlier in the year so we could have started looking at private accommodation. But by the time they told us – a week before freshers’ – everything was taken.
‘This should have been a really exciting time for her but instead it was full of anxiety, worry and panic. We even thought of looking at her back-up university to see if there were spaces there.
‘My daughter has come to terms with it now and there are a lot of people in the same position. She will make the best of it.
‘We wanted her to have the traditional university experience where you make friends at your halls and you are close to the campus.
‘The university has just not been transparent. They show you around accommodation on offer holders’ day knowing that not everyone will be able to stay here. They say they know it’s not ideal, but no one has apologised.’
Other universities are working hard to make up the shortfall: Exeter University was given the green light last year on a £185 million development project that is set to deliver 1,800 new rooms for students by 2028.
In fact, in the past two weeks, plans to create more halls and residences for students have got under way in Oxford, Liverpool and Sheffield to help deal with the crisis.
But the institutions are still faced with hurdles, with the ‘town versus gown’ debate continuing to divide some communities.
Just last week, an application to convert a care home into a 126-bed student block in Cotham Hill, Bristol, was blocked by the local council, with one councillor declaring: ‘The area is over-concentrated. There are too many students. The community has become unbalanced.’
These local community woes criticising the ‘insatiable rate’ at which student accommodation is being built were echoed in an article in the Exeter Express, which argued it was ‘family homes for families’ that were needed ‘not HMOs for students’.
This debate will undoubtedly continue to rage on for years to come, but it is clear that universities need to tackle the issue head-on, so no incoming student is forced to delay one of the most exciting years of their young lives because there was no affordable room at the inn.