Real Estate High cost of living
Student commutes to university by plane because it’s cheaper than his rent
Status: 07.03.2024 | Reading time: 3 minutes
Quelle: picture alliance/ZUMAPRESS.com/Bayne Stanley
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Students are troubled people. Money is constantly tight and at the same time the cost of living is rising. Because his apartment was becoming too expensive, a student from Canada decided to move back in with his parents. And commuting to university by plane.
Tim Chen studies economics at the University of British Columbia (UBC). His university is in Vancouver, the Canadian city with over a million inhabitants in the southwest of the country. He shares the UBC campus with 55,000 fellow students in one of the most livable cities in the world.
Until last December, Chen also lived in the vibrant city not far from the USA. But then he received a notice about a co-increase – and found a creative solution: He moved back to his parents and has been commuting to lectures regularly ever since – by plane. “It’s like taking a bus,” he said in an interview with the Canadian TV-Sender CTV News Vancouver.
Shock after rent increase
Vancouver is considered the Canadian city with the highest housing costs – a one-room apartment costs an average of 3,000 Canadian dollars (2,037 euros). The vacancy rate is 0.9 percent. For comparison: In Germany, Munich was long considered the most expensive city for students. At 0.2 percent When the apartment was vacant, the rental prices, warm, were 695 euros for a 30 square meter apartment. New front runner has been Frankfurt am Main since last year. The comparison apartment there costs one euro more.
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Prizes Chen can only dream of. After a trip lasting several months, he was shocked at the end of 2023: his landlord suddenly demanded 2,500 Canadian dollars, the equivalent of around 1,700 euros, for Chen’s room in a shared apartment. Before the vacation, the rent was $900 less. It was clear to Chen that he couldn’t afford it. However, giving up his studies was out of the question, after all, he was in the final stages of his master’s degree.
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So Chen moved back to his parents in Calgary, almost 1,000 kilometers away. He saves so much that he can commute to university – by plane, as he said in the Internet forum “reddit“ reported.
That’s what the extreme pendulum costs
Each flight lasts around an hour and a half, explained Chen, who describes himself on Reddit as a “super commuter,” which means something like “super commuter,” but is meant more in the sense of extreme commuter. It takes him about two hours to get from the front door to the lecture hall.
Then he has three hours of lectures, gets on the bus and back to the airport, is how the young man describes his everyday life to the television station CTV News. Footage shows him checking in at the airport. His parents or friends would later pick him up from the airport in Calgary, his home was only ten minutes away.
1,035 first-year students find a place in the university’s own dormitory “Orchard Commons” for between 570 euros and 760 euros
Quelle: picture alliance/ZUMAPRESS.com/Darryl Dyck
This is possible because the Covid pandemic has digitalized university operations worldwide and seminars and lectures can be followed on laptops. But Chen has to travel to Vancouver for five to seven lectures a month because attendance is mandatory.
Chen can only afford this because he works for an international management consultant alongside his university. So the young man can handle numbers. A return flight from Calgary would cost him no more than 180 Canadian dollars, around 122 euros. Commuting costs around 1,200 Canadian dollars per month, so renting an apartment or room doesn’t make sense, Chen said in an interview.
In his parents’ house, he only has to contribute to the additional costs, explains Chen.