Is there enough student demand?
This is the big question that arises due to the unusual speed with which internship places have been reproduced for students from outside Biscay who decide to study at any of the university offers offered by the territory and its capital. The opinions are varied although the decision of the various financial funds that have opted for Bilbao seems to be clear. The person in charge of My Bilbao campus, Jorge Panera, assures that “The studies commissioned by the investment funds that own these residences indicate that it is and that the demand will continue to rise.” His personal opinion goes along these lines, although he thinks that “with the squares that we will reach with our new residence, and if no more are opened, the demand will be covered, although I do not know if in the near future or more in the medium term”.
Private residences have an obvious niche in those students who still aspire to enter the halls of residence at Deusto or the UPV they do not access due to their grades, the quotas for careers that the Miguel de Unamuno public center has or that in the interviews they carry out in their pre-registration do not exceed the tax limits.
The director of the Deusto residence hall, Fernando Asenjo, confesses that “It makes us very sad and it doesn’t cost much to say no to the kids” that on these dates they are having the interviews to see if they are candidates to be residents in September.
DEMAND TRIPLED
The person in charge of the center, opened in 1967 in its current location, assures that “demand this year has tripled” what seems to guarantee that Bilbao has a lot of pull for young foreigners to study careers and not only in the Jesuit university.
The Deusto hall of residence also hosts students from the UPV, the Mondragon University and the DigiPen Institute of Technology, known as the video game university. These new specialized higher education centers that have arrived in Bilbao are another reason why there is more demand for students in residences. In any case, it must be taken into account that residence halls are not the only alternative to living in Bilbao with the rank of university student.
There are thousands who prefer to share rental flats with other young people and in fact even the UPV itself has a service that puts this group in contact with homeowners interested in student rentals.
Some studies indicate that of the approximately 24,000 students who study at the Biscay campus of the public university, around 4,000 need lodging, of which, around 2,800 choose to live in shared apartments, something that is also reproduced in the Erasmus students who study in the Biscayan capital.