Loan system kept students living at home with their parents

Students stopped receiving the benefit in September 2015. From that point on, getting a higher education degree became a lot more expensive. As a result, many students couldn't afford to live on their own anymore, so they stayed with their parents throughout their studies.

A report by Statistics Netherlands (Dutch acronym: CBS) shows that, aside from financial constraints, students had other reasons to continue living with their parents, such as a shortage of housing options and rising rents. Nevertheless, the loan system clearly affected their living situation.

CBS surveyed how many graduates who took five years to complete their studies were still living with their parents after that five-year period. Before September 2015, about 40 percent of men lived with their parents throughout their studies, but suddenly that number rose to more than fifty percent. As for women, the percentage went from less than 25 percent to 34 percent.

HOP. Source: CBS. The proportion of students living with their parents through an entire five-year degree programme. The blue lines represents men and the red line represents women.

What's more, students at universities of applied sciences were more likely to live with their parents in that period than research university students. However, the same pattern always emerges: the break comes in the year the student loan system was introduced. 

Before 2015, 20 percent of university students and 40 percent of students at universities of applied sciences lived with their parents throughout their studies. After 2015, the number rose to over 30 and 50 percent, respectively.

Those who moved out of their parents' homes did so later than students in previous generations. 
 

Image by HOP. Source: CBS. The graph shows how many years it took for students to move out of their parents' homes. These numbers only consider those who completed their studies in five years. The blue line represents those who moved out after one year, the orange one is for those who moved out after two years, the green one is for those who moved out after three years, the light blue one is for those who did so after four years, and the purple one is for those who moved out after five years.

It should be noted that these figures may be affected by the fact that some students forget to notify the municipality of their move. So, some of them may have been counted as still living with their parents even though they were not. 

Before the student grant was scrapped, students would notify the municipality more quickly because the amount of money they received depended on whether they lived on their own. 

Either way, the trend is clear. Even the coronavirus pandemic had a lesser impact on students' living situations than the loan system.

Current students
The National Student Union (LSVb) sees the CBS figures as confirmation that students have been hit hard by the loan system. Moreover, the housing market has not improved since the basic grant was reinstated in 2023. “It is really harmful that young people are unable to take that next step,” says chair Maaike Krom. “Rents are so high that students must count every penny to find a place of their own.”

Today, almost fifty percent of students live with their parents, according to figures released by student housing providers last fall. Some are even giving up on moving out altogether: they are so discouraged by the housing shortage and the high cost of rent that they are not even trying to find a room.