A recent news report from the Financial Times (FT) featured insights from ROPS Paper Crisis By Design (authored by Shanshan Jiang-Brittan) in a major investigation into the international student housing market.
The article, "The hangover from Britain’s student housing boom," explores the rapid growth of Purpose-Built Student Accommodation (PBSA) as a highly profitable asset class for global private equity firms and institutional investors.
The report specifically highlights Jiang-Brittan’s analysis of the systemic issues within the housing market. Quoting her recent research, the FT notes: “The normalisation of luxury off-campus PBSA fuels a student housing crisis that is not incidental, but by design,” said Shanshan Jiang-Brittan of the University of California, Berkeley, in a paper published last year.
The cited paper, "Crisis by Design: Student Housing and the Hidden Cost of Higher Education," was published as part of the CSHE Research & Occasional Paper Series (ROPS). In it, Jiang-Brittan argues that the shift toward high-end, private-sector housing developments has transformed a basic necessity of the university experience into a profit-driven commodity, often at the expense of affordability and student equity.
Read the full report
Read the original ROPS article