Student Debt Payback Far Worse Than Believed

Re:Student Debt Payback Far Worse Than Believed by lordnacho on Thursday January 19, 2017 @06:31AM (#13434940)

This is quite surprising to me. I studied in the UK, and for three years my room was literally in a disused brothel. I kid you not, it was a rumour when I went there, and it turned up on Wikipedia one day. Not an unhealthy room, no mould or leaks, but nothing like a hotel room. The college actually owned a hotel, so I guess they could have decked it out that way, but they were sensible not to spend money where it wasn't needed.

My brother's just finished at Columbia, and he was living in a slum apartment in NYC. Not nice at all.

Has someone got pics of these amazing college facilities?

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Re:Student Debt Payback Far Worse Than Believed by manarth on Thursday January 19, 2017 @07:42AM (#13435276)

  I studied in the UK

When was this? The accommodation in The Young Ones [1] isn't too far a cry from the sorts of student accommodation you'd find in the 80s and 90s, and a disused brothel would fit right into that picture.

It seems to me (anecdata), that shortly after tuition fees were introduced (1998/1999), the trend for better (and correspondingly more expensive) student accommodation began, kicking off development of purpose-build accommodation.

There's some interesting numbers in a real-estate report from GVA [2], which shows a reduction in university-owned student halls, and an increase in privately-owned purpose-built student halls.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Young_Ones_(TV_series)

[2] http://www.gva.co.uk/research/student-housing-market-overvie... [PDF]

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Re:Student Debt Payback Far Worse Than Believed by lordnacho on Friday January 20, 2017 @04:42AM (#13442613)

Turn of the millenium.

Some of my friends in London were indeed living like in The Young Ones.

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