At the end of July the Radboud University (RU) did not manage to assist all incoming internationals with entitlement to housing mediation. The RU advised students without any housing arranged to cancel their study plans. However, everyone did receive an offer for a room eventually.
The RU has a housing service for international students that helps them find housing for the maximum duration of one year. Students are entitled to the service when they live too far to commute. Many students are therefore excluded from the service. The application also has to be done in time to receive help from the RU.
Housing offer
International students that are entitled to assistance and request it in time receive an offer from the RU. ‘They get one offer’, says Martijn Gerritsen, RU spokesperson. ‘If they decline, they will not get another one’, he says. Before the summer holiday the RU failed to make an offer to all entitled students because of a shortage of available housing. The remaining students who did not receive an offer were advised not to come if they did not find housing before the 1st of August.
‘It was early in the administrative process’, Gerritsen claims. ‘In the end, several students declined their offer’, he says. ‘Maybe they found a different solution for housing or decided to go to a different university.’ The declined rooms were then offered to the remaining international students. ‘So everyone entitled to housing mediation received an offer from the RU’, according to Gerritsen.
This article was published in Dutch on August 30th 2022.