Why It Matters Universities Impact
Summary
We have measured the impact that university campus buildings, student accommodation blocks, research facilities, and teaching hospitals have on their abundance and proximity to a given postcode.
Definition
The phenomenon we are trying to measure is the effect that university buildings and the students who use/inhabit them have on surrounding postcodes. It is predicted that this effect will be greater the more buildings and students that are clustered in a given area. The closer a postcode is to a university building the more that postcode will be affected. We are also assuming that campus buildings will have a greater impact than student halls, which in turn, will have a greater impact than teaching hospitals and research facilities. We have included all buildings belonging to universities based within London and it’s surrounding postcodes, as well as private student accomodation ran by major suppliers such as Unite and IQ. One off buildings and and satellite offices which are owned or ran by universities that are based outside our area of concern have not been included.
Interpretation
| Dataset | Explanation |
|---|---|
| Postcode Harmonised University Impact Score | This score represents the overall impact of university buildings on your postcode. This includes campus buildings, student accommodation, teaching hospitals and research facilities. Values have been rescaled (harmonised) on a scale of 0 to 100, with the most impacted postcodes scoring close to 100 while postcodes which are unaffected score 0. |
| Postcode Harmonised Campus Building Impact Score | This score represents the impact of campus buildings on your postcode. Values have been rescaled (harmonised) on a scale of 0 to 100, with the most impacted postcodes scoring close to 100 while postcodes which are unaffected score 0. |
| Postcode Harmonised Student Accommodation Impact Score | This score represents the impact of student accommodation buildings on your postcode. Values have been rescaled (harmonised) on a scale of 0 to 100, with the most impacted postcodes scoring close to 100 while postcodes which are unaffected score 0. |
| Postcode Z-Score for Harmonised University Impact | This tells you how many standard deviations above or below the mean your postcodes university impact score is compared to the London-wide distribution. |
| University Building Distribution | If your postode is not impacted by university buildings you can view the overall distribution of such buildings on the map. Postcodes that contain university buildings are marked with hexagons of various colours depending on the number of buildings which exist within that postcode. |
Why the metric matters from a commercial inhabitant’s perspective
University students and university staff populations mostg obviously have a positive impact on retailers. They have a greater opportunity exercising commercial activities and footfall (not only from the university students and staff but often the tourists that come to visit London’s universities), which leads to a larger customer base and elevated profits for comparable retailers located in student towns.
On top of this landlords also impacted by high numbers of students and student staff in their postcode and the impacts are overwhelmingly positive for this group. Not only does the presence of university students and staff provide a consistent pool of tenants, but student populations create an intensification of competition in the rental market, which significantly drives up the prices that landlords can demand. In some circumstances, landlords also receive a tax break if they exclusively rent their properties to students. Pardoxically, Landlords might also benefit from the presence of student accommodation buildings as they are often able to undercut major providers and take advantage of students attracted to the area.
Why the metric matters from a residential inhabitant’s perspective
The impact on residents of university population are a mix of positive and negative. The most obvious impact to permanent residents is that students hugely drive up rental and purchase prices which can make the local housing market more competitive than it would have otherwise been. In some cases, the resultant rates prices out previous local residents. In some circumstances, the dedicated use of housing stock for students means that some property can sit empty during holidays which is not an efficient use of housing stock.
University affiliates can also be a drain on local resources, as they are often (partially) exempted from paying council tax so they do not directly contribute to local authorities’ budgets, but they use local public services, so they are net beneficiaries of local services, arguably to the detriment of the non-student population.
This situation described above is not such an issue if an area has a history of large student populations, as the council will most likely have accounted for any exemption for the student population into their future service delivery projections. In certain areas, student numbers have risen due to an overspill from neighbouring postcodes or because of the establishment of a new tertiary educational institution. Then the fact remains that students are exempt from payment of council tax, whilst using local services. This means that there will be a perceived strain on local resources which may become a very real strain.
However, the presence of students in an area has a number of positive impacts on residential inhabitants. Studies show that university students return a “creativity dividend” to residents - that is they tend to bring innovative business ideas to the local area, and often set up initiatives which benefit the public too, like proposals for the creation of public spaces.
(Photograph: Nicolai Karaneschev, Wikimedia Commons)
Commentary
London is home to one of the highest concentrations of universities and higher learning institutions in the world with over 80 institutions operating here. Consequently, London is also home to over 500,000 students.
Media reports of student impacts on neighbourhoods are often restricted to cases where residents find students to cause a number of disruptions such as noise nuisance at night, increased vandalism and perhaps even increased levels of alcohol-related misdemeanours. As a probable result, local authorities have been under increasing pressure (in certain neighbourhoods) to decline planning permission for student bedsits after residents complained that more student accommodation would lead to an unbalanced community.
The residents of some neighbourhoods have even claimed a “student ghetto” feeling has been created, with reference to the high concentrations and poorer living standards experienced by students. Due to the multi-occupancy housing lived in by some students, some streets are 80 per cent student occupied, which also leads some areas to have something of a “ghost town” feel when students depart for their long holidays, which takes away from the overall amenity value of the area.
It can also take away from the real estate available to develop other new facilities in the area whether public or private. For example, certain areas of London that are home to university halls of residence are really only known for this and therefore have not become buzzy residential neighbourhoods or ‘destinations’ that the majority of Londoners feel entitled to enjoy.
University College London made history in 1878, becoming the first higher education institute to allow female undergraduates to study on the same campus as their male counterparts.
History
London is home to one of the country’s ten oldest universities-University College London (UCL). UCL was founded in 1826 under the name London University, as a secular alternative to the religious institutions of Oxford and Cambridge Universities. In 1836, UCL was one of the two founding constituent colleges of the new University of London, a collegiate federal university that now includes almost 20 colleges.
UCL’s alumni roster includes the likes of Francis Crick (co-discoverer of the DNA), Ricky Gervais, all of the members of Coldplay, and Mahatma Gandhi. Many other well-known people have studied in London’s universities. George Soros and Stelios Haji-loannou (the founder of Easy Jet) were both at the London School of Economics in Holborn. Desmond Tutu and Florence Nightingale were both at King’s College London (obviously a few years apart). Whilst we can not name all of the London University alumni, it is worth noting that the Nobel Prize winning chemist Sir Alexander Fleming attended Imperial College London.