winter semester
Tens of thousands of students are waiting for a place in a hall of residence
A dormitory at the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt. photo
© Patrick Pleul/dpa
Tens of thousands of students are new to the universities, but living space is, as usual, scarce. The student unions also do not have enough places in their halls of residence at the start of the semester.
According to the Deutsches Studentenwerk (DSW), tens of thousands of students are still waiting for a place in a hall of residence at the beginning of the winter semester. In mid-September there were more than 35,000 people on waiting lists for a place in eleven major university cities, 15,000 of them alone in Munich, probably the most expensive university city in Germany, as the German Press Agency learned from DSW. According to their association, the student unions operate around 1,700 halls of residence with almost 200,000 places nationwide.
“The lack of affordable housing for students is a glaring structural deficit in the German university system and a social problem,” said DSW Secretary General Matthias Anbuhl. He pointed out that the number of state-subsidized university places has increased by 52 percent over the past 15 years, while the number of state-subsidized student residences has only increased by 6 percent. “These scissors must not widen any further.”
Anbuhl expressed the hope that a federal-state program “Young Living” promised by the traffic lights in the coalition agreement, as intended by Federal Building Minister Klara Geywitz (SPD), can start at the beginning of next year. According to earlier information from the 46-year-old, it is about three-digit million amounts. The DSW general secretary called the program important. It could help in the medium term.