New hub established for commuting students in Limerick
Marieke Bakhuizen and Dikshant Rana at the UL Student Life Commuter Hub. Picture: Brian Arthur
With life on campus firmly back on track, colleges are dealing with a new phenomenon: An influx of commuter students, whose college experience can be severely curtailed by their daily journey to and from classes.
In the first weeks of the first semester every year, it’s not uncommon for the students who are still struggling to sort accommodation to resort to commuting daily as a short-term fix.
The numbers usually drop off as the weeks progress, but driven by the accommodation crisis, anecdotal reports from colleges around the country indicate that more students than ever are still commuting close to the end of the semester.
Commuting can be a lonely experience, arriving early to a dark, empty campus before anything opens, or being forced to leave before any clubs, societies, or events, limiting your time to make friends.
It’s had such an impact on students at the University of Limerick that it led UL Student Life, the representative group for the university’s 16,000 students, to open an early-morning hub for those forced to commute on dark mornings.
This year, the number of students commuting to UL cannot be compared to previous years, according to Laura Corcoran, UL Student Life communities' officer.
“We’re in completely different circumstances to any years gone by," she said.
An accommodation survey carried out by UL Student Life during weeks four and six of the semester found that 41% of the more than 1,200 students who took part were still commuting.
They have also seen a significant rise in the number of students availing of their financial aid fund to help cover the cost of commuting.
“They are commuting in any distance from one hour to three hours. We can see it in our engagement here in UL Student Life too. Things are becoming less and less accessible, from our events to representation, because a lot of evening time events aren’t suitable for commuters,” said Ms Corcoran. Â
The commuter hub gives students somewhere to visit in the dark mornings, where they can get a free breakfast and a chance to socialise before they start their day.
It’s currently open three days a week, between 8am and 9am, with plans to expand during the next semester.
Ms Corcoran said: “We didn’t know what the pickup would be like at all, but it’s been overwhelming to see.
“I think a lot of us had maybe presumed that it would be the longer-distance commuters who were really harshly affected.”Â
Among those attending the early-morning hub are students from Galway, a journey of about 90 minutes one-way, and another student from Newport, around 25 minutes away by car.
But the issue is there’s actually only one bus service to Newport during academic hours and that’s at 7.30am," explained Ms Corcoran.
"She’s on the campus from 8am and her lectures don’t start until 2pm. We’re seeing that a lot. We have people commuting in from Millstreet in Cork, and technically in a car, that’s not too far away, but they are having to end up commuting to another part of Cork to get another service in to Limerick which is bringing them in to Colbert Station and then they have to come to UL from there.
“There are a lot of awfully long commutes and a lot of students will end up with a lot of time on campus that just has no use for them.”Â
Some facilities, such as the campus library, open from 8am, but Ms Corcoran says spending 12 hours a day in the library studying is "an awful lot of added stress", especially if students have no alternative social outlets.
“All of a sudden we have students coming on campus who don’t have a chance to socialise or meet people. In the commuter hub, it’s so nice that we have people who’ve been coming in from the first day who are now sitting with people that they didn’t know prior, having a coffee with them.
“It’s creating a network for them that wasn’t there before, where they weren’t able to engage."
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