More students moved out of parental home last year; First increase in years

After years of decline, more students moved out on their own last year. That at least applies to students who started studying at a university after the summer of coronavirus year 2020. Statistics Netherlands calculated that almost 26,000 WO students moved from their parental home to a university city to live on their own. That breaks the trend of about 22,000 students taking that step in the thee previous years.

The increase is related to an increase in the number of enrollments at universities. However, the increased popularity of living in student housing cannot be fully explained by the simple fact that there are more students.

"The number of students who left home to live on their own in a university city increased not only in absolute terms, but also in relative terms," according to Statistics Netherlands. The percentage of WO students who went to live on their own increased for the first time since 2016. Of the WO university students who still lived at home, 18.6 percent left their parental home. 

In Amsterdam, the influx of WO university students who moved to live in the city increased the most, at 38 percent. The capital is followed by Utrecht, where the increase was 31 percent. Statistics Netherlands also saw an increase in the cities of Leiden, Delft and Rotterdam. Tilburg, Eindhoven and Wageningen were stable. Only in Enschede did slightly fewer WO students move from their parental home. 

Over the past years, fewer and fewer students have been living on their own. One of the explanations Statistics Netherlands previously gave for the fact that students lived with their parents for longer, was the introduction of the loan system of 2015. The bottom of this downward trend may now have been reached. It should be noted, however, that these figures are only provisional and that HBO students were not taken into account.