Last year, a team of researchers interviewed thousands of students from higher education institutions located in the Lisbon and Porto regions and found that, among the displaced students, 48% did not have a formal rental contract and 51% stated that their landlord did not issue rent receipts.

Four out of every 10 students live far from home and therefore need to rent a place. Without contracts, these students are unable to access support such as additional accommodation, leaving them in a “situation of great vulnerability”, warns the study “Cartography and socioeconomic dynamics of higher education students in Greater Porto and Greater Lisbon”, published by Edulog.

A student studying away from home can easily represent a cost for the family of one thousand euros per month, with the largest part going towards paying for accommodation, researcher Maria José Sá and one of the authors of the study told Lusa.

Most students pay between 200 and 400 euros in monthly rent, but there are those who spend 600 euros on housing, the expert explained, lamenting that few are lucky enough to get a room in a university residence at affordable prices.

“University residences are unable to respond to the number of requests from students, which are first allocated to scholarship students,” explained Maria José Sá, in an interview with Lusa.

The number of beds in university residences has been increasing, but they are still insufficient, as only 3% of students who apply for a place are able to get a place. The result: The remaining students have to subject themselves to “renting rooms at extremely high costs”, the study highlights.

Then there are the costs of food, with the majority spending between 50 and 110 euros, but there is also a considerable number of students who spend more than 170 euros, especially those who are displaced and foreign.

As most people live close to schools, transportation costs are not very significant, with public transportation being the most used means of transportation.

However, these costs also include water, electricity and internet bills and, all in all, it is normal to have monthly bills “reaching close to a thousand euros”, warned the researcher.

“A family with two children studying at higher education level becomes unsustainable”, especially because families continue to be the ones who pay the most bills.

Two out of every three students (66.5%) depend financially on their families to attend higher education, with scholarships being the second main source of funding, considered insufficient to meet the needs of the displaced student population, according to the study.

“Many landlords do not issue receipts and therefore students cannot access support such as the accommodation supplement”, highlighted Alberto Amaral, scientific coordinator of the Edulog Advisory Board.

Therefore, researchers recommend that the university residence program be implemented more quickly, so that many more rooms are made available at affordable prices.

In addition to creating more subsidized accommodation, researchers recommend an increase in scholarships and a review of eligibility criteria, according to the study developed as part of a research project by the Center for Higher Education Policy Research (CIPES), supported by Edulog, the Education think tank of the Belmiro de Azevedo Foundation.

The researchers also recommend increasing state funding for HEIs and providing direct funding to students.

Maria José Sá highlighted that the study portrays the reality of the regions of Lisbon and Porto, where the majority of higher education institutions and more than half of students attending higher education are located, and that in the rest of the country the scenario will be different.