Student housing investors ‘spooked’ by ghost of Zoom University

The words “online university” send a spike of fear into the hearts of many recent graduates. They resurface memories of being refined to quarters, forced to attend college virtually in what became known to many as Zoom University.

The impact of online college classes on students, however, paled in comparison to its impact on investors in purpose-built student accommodation who were, an Oireachtas Committee heard on Tuesday, “spooked” by students attending college online.

“Clearly, investors were spooked by the feature of Covid-19, which meant that people couldn’t attend university for almost two years,” said Paul Lemass, the assistant secretary general of the Department for Further and Higher Education.

Investors, he said, completed existing projects during the pandemic but in the immediate aftermath, “stepped back to see what would stabilise” as the new norm in the higher education space.

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Mr Lemass told the Oireachtas Committee that the construction of purpose-built student accommodation was tracking quite well against the projected growth in demand until 2020, but that in the aftermath of the pandemic, commencements have “struggled to recover”.

Eventually, as investors recovered from the terror of Zoom University and looked to restart building student accommodation, the soaring inflationary impact of the Russian invasion of Ukraine hit, Mr Lemass told the committee, though with far less colour.

Demand for student housing, as for all housing, far outstrips demand. The committee was told that the estimate of unmet demand stands at “circa 25,000 beds based on Department of Education student projections from July 2014” .

With seemingly ever-increasing demand for student accommodation, the department is currently “modelling” where growth is as part of new, longer-term projections for the next decade. While the department did not give an up-to-date figure upon request, it is clear the gap is monumental.

It remains to be seen if investors will overcome their fears or if, in the search for housing this September, students will be forced to move into crumbling haunted houses or the even more ghastly option: digs.