The university does not have enough rooms available to house all new international students this summer. There are 165 new students that won’t be able to get a room, making their academic future in Nijmegen uncertain.

Finding a room in Nijmegen while living in Munich, Madrid or Milan is no easy feat, which is why for several years Radboud University has aided international students in finding accommodations. For the first year of their studies, students can get a room assigned with SSH& or a private landlord.

Too Few Rooms

But it turns out that the university does not have enough rooms available to meet demand this summer. According to Martijn Gerritsen, roughly 200 international students-to-be were informed of this via email; of those 200, 35 have managed to find rooms in the meantime – possibly because other students opted out.

The university can give rooms to up to 1000 students. Distance is deciding factor in assigning the rooms: people who live further away from Nijmegen are given priority. German students who live close to the Dutch border were already excluded from participating.

The group of 200 students consists of both regular students and exchange students. They will now have to find a room by themselves – from a long way away. That is not going to be easy, because a lot of people offering student housing don’t want international tenants. The students are also at risk of being scammed; It’s happened before that a room that was already paid for turned out to be non-existent. 

‘Stay home’

Those students who can’t manage to find a room before the first of August are strongly advised by the University to stay home, and not come to Nijmegen. ‘Finding a room will be impossible at that point’, the University states in an email. In effect, this means that those students won’t be able to commence their studies in Nijmegen.

According to spokesperson Gerritsen, the University is using short-term solutions. For example, students are offered €350,- if they sub-let their room to the University for a semester.

The University is working together with SSH& in the long-term to create temporary housing on campus; The intent is to build 150 housing units behind the Huygens building.

However, this has proven difficult. The initial plan was to have housing set up within a year, but the University is still looking for companies offering ‘moveable building concepts’, and viability studies still need to be done. ‘Those sometimes take more time than one would like’, Gerritsen responds. That means that the current prognosis is ‘towards the end of 2023’.