Campus housing for international students

Saxion has announced plans to start construction on buildings in both Enschede and Deventer to house international students. The goal is to create at least one hundred dorm rooms. One of the requirements for the newly announced campus housing project is that it needs to be close to the college to improve campus life. By 2012 the campus residences should be move in ready.

The Saxion International Office performed a price and quality survey amongst international students. Chris van den Borne, who heads up the International Office says, “The results of this survey show that students ranked an internet connection as the most important feature in a dorm room. It also showed that the student considers a room measuring 12 square meters, large enough. They prefer access to a private shower and bathroom and don’t mind sharing a kitchen. The students questioned indicated that they would be willing to pay 250 Euros monthly for this type of room, even though the average cost a student pays for a room in Enschede and Deventer is anywhere between 300 and 350 Euros”.

Saxion is researching whether they can build dormitories with the abovementioned specifications. On October 1, 2009, a combination of three construction and building management companies presented ideas. Van den Borne couldn’t comment yet on what transpired during these presentations but did mention that it would be challenging to incorporate all the preferences the students indicated in the survey. “The partners we are considering working with prefer to build larger rooms to assure greater marketability to target markets other then students. There is a gap between what the builders see as marketable and what the international students wish for”.

According to Saxion President, Mr. Wim Boomkamp, several locations offer interesting possibilities for future campus housing. “In Enschede we have land available behind the villa and apparently the adjacent hospital building will be vacated in the future leaving it open for a different usage. Maybe we can work with different organizations to create housing for our students in the old hospital building as well as housing for student doctors.

As far as Saxion Deventer goes, Boomkamp mentions, “We have several options in Deventer as well, for example the area around the railways. At the moment all possibilities are investigated. Within the next three to four years we want the campus housing occupied by our international student population”. Boomkamp continues, “I hope to announce within the next year what the final plans will be and how the housing is going to look”.

Currently Saxion Deventer manages 60 living units and another 100 rooms are available to students via an outside building management organization. Saxion Enschede manages 40 units and has access to 30 flexible rooms. Once the new plans are realized, Saxion will drop management of the current rooms but will keep the flex rooms available through the outside building management organization.