Colleges Should Provide More Student Accomodation

There is a solution to the constant and unsustainable increasing rent situation that now exists in the larger urban centres where students are looking for accommodation for the new academic year. The rent that parents are now expected to pay for their children for the college year is gone beyond a joke and it is now a ‘racket’ as far as I can see. Many of these third level colleges have plenty of spare land and I would propose that they build more college accommodation for their own students and offer it at an affordable price. The cost of building that accommodation would be soon paid back through rents and it would ease the situation as it stands at the moment. The brutal reality of what is going on at the moment is that some parents will simply not be able to afford to send their children to third level education if rents keep rising the way they have been over the past couple of years. This proposal would solve a lot of those problems and it might even make the colleges themselves more self financing. It is something that the government and the minister should consider.