Before, international students were always assigned a furnished room through the Student Service Centre, while Dutch students could only rent unfurnished rooms through Idealis. International PhD student Deng Ying: ‘I really appreciate that we received a furnished room. But once you have settled, you want to buy furniture in your own style. In addition some students already know from the start where they can get furniture and what they prefer.’
Starting from the 4th of January everything will go through Idealis. Then the students seeking a room can respond to the whole range of Idealis rooms, and choose between furnished and unfurnished rooms. Corina van Dijk, spokeswoman of Idealis: ‘We often receive questions from international students who want to rent unfurnished rooms. We now want to offer everyone the same options and make no distinctions.’
Idealis also wants to distribute the furnished rooms more equally among the different complexes. Now, for example, all the rooms in the student building Bornsesteeg are still furnished. A portion of these rooms in the building will become ‘unfurnished’ in the course of 2016. Idealis will add furnished rooms on Marijkeweg, a complex with many self-contained rooms.
The result of this change is that the international and Dutch students will probably come to live more mixed. ‘That was not the primary goal of the change’, says Van Dijk. The most important reason for the change is the freedom of choice. ‘We offer different types of furnished rooms: self-contained and shared facilities in all our buildings.’
At the start of the academic year all students will compete for the same rooms. To make sure that international students can find a room in time, room seekers that live more than 175 kilometres from Wageningen receive ‘distance urgency’.
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