The bar chart illustrates the proportion of residential areas where students lived from the 1960s to the 2000s.
Overall, there were changes in the types of accommodation that students opted for between the 1960s and the 2000s, but the large increase in the number of students living in shared accommodation with other students has been particularly noticeable.
In the 1960s, pupils who chose to live in a house or an apartment with other students and those paying guests with a host family had the same percentage, 35 percent. A smaller percentage either lived in a student hall residence or stayed at home with their family. By the 2000s, these figures had seen significant changes. There was a dramatic increase in the number of students living with other students, 70 percent, while those living with a host family had fallen to just 5 percent. Similarly, figures for pupils living in a hall of residence and with their families had also seen changes, but these were less marked.
A more detailed look at the graph reveals overall changes were not always steady. While the number of students who chose to live in shared houses or flats rose each decade, the change was most remarkable in the 1980s, when the figure rose sharply from 40 percent in the 1970s to 60 percent. This significantly widened the gap between the other types of accommodation. The number of student staying with their own family declined steadily, then stagnated in the 1980s and 1990s, before rising again in the 2000s. Meanwhile, the percentage of students living in a hall of residence fluctuated, with student numbers rising and falling twice during this period.