Students need housing options

The crisis in the market is an opportunity for the private sector and investors

The high cost of accommodation poses a hurdle for international universities in Dubai to attract students from abroad. Sarah Dea / The National

The reason why students from all over the world want to study in cities such as Paris, New York and London, despite the high cost of living, is that these cities have the world’s largest number of globally-ranked universities. In this regard, Dubai also has a great advantage as the city not only has the largest concentration of international branch campuses in the world, but most of them charge lower fees than their home campuses.

The only problem is the high cost of accommodation, which significantly increases students’ expenses here. This explains why our institutions are facing a challenge, as The National reported yesterday, in attracting students from beyond the region. The universities can’t do much to address this issue, because most of them do not have stand-alone campuses. But this high cost erodes the UAE’s competitive advantage, which is the lower cost of a quality university education.

Yet, the crisis presents an opportunity for the private sector to fill the gap in the market by building student accommodation tailored to different levels of affordability.

In the UK, for example, student property has grown into an asset class of its own and a wave of private equity and institutional cash has poured into the sector. Students also benefit from the many options. They can live in private accommodation or in university halls of residence, many of which are owned and run by property companies on behalf of various universities and colleges.

What’s interesting about student accommodation is that they can be a fairly simple building type. Treated in this way, quite a lot of highly functional accommodation can be built in a relatively short time.

More importantly, once this shortfall is addressed, universities can compete openly for students and place even further emphasis on the quality of education.