Students

The press love a bit of Oxbridge competition, but Oxford is embroiled in a far older and more ruthless rivalry: town vs. gown. It was in a dispute between the university and city of Oxford that Cambridge University has its foundations. In 1209, according to Roger of Wendover’s chronicle, an Oxford liberal arts scholar accidentally killed a woman. The Mayor led a group of townspeople to the killer’s house, only to find that he had fled – instead, they seized the three innocent scholars with whom he rented the house and hanged them. Fearing future tyranny and terrified of their fellow citizens, an exodus of Oxonians left the dreaming spires

On waking up (at noon) on Thursday morning, I found I had a text from one of my fellow History freshers. Sent at 6am and accompanied by a screenshot of a half-finished essay: ‘WHY am I still up?!’ The all-nighter is a notorious Oxford experience, and not one I thought I would ever have to sample. ‘I’ll be fine getting the work done at university,’ I blithely assured those warning me of how unstructured a History student’s life is, ‘I like to keep busy.’ What I failed to appreciate is that it’s impossible not to be busy at university. School without lessons was dire — by Tuesday afternoon of the

My freshers’ pack (a yo-yo, two balloons, a sachet of instant hot chocolate and a condom) is barely visible beneath English Historical Documents, volume 1. Two nights of dancing knee-deep in foam has taken its toll on my shoes, and I feel slightly tricked – encouraged to partake in a week of university-approved partying, and then, two days in, given a 19-item reading list and an essay due in for next week. School friends’ Facebook pages are torturous: three weeks into term at other universities, yet to hand in their first piece of work and seemingly out every night. At dinner the conversation has morphed from ‘So where are you from?’ to ‘You haven’t started writing yet either,

It’s senseless to ask how things are going to end, because things as a general rule don’t. They rumble on, they morph, and yesterday’s drama becomes tomorrow’s eyebrow-raising justification for thinking that people used to be inexplicable idiots. Nonetheless, I read these stories of house prices rising again and I cannot help but wonder. How is it going to end? How is it even supposed to end? What is Mark Carney’s golden future? Interest rates stay low, repayments stay low, house prices keep going up and then… what? How do all these people who have overextended themselves eventually underextend themselves so as not to be utterly buggered when rates finally

Yesterday came the news that net migration has once again fallen, this time to its lowest level for ten years. In the year ending September 2012, net migration was 153,000. That is a fall of 89,000 on the previous year when it reached a dizzy 242,000. This is undeniably good news. The public have consistently shown their desire to see net migration reduced and we now have a government which is committed to lowering net migration and has so far had considerable success. Many on the left, who cannot bring themselves to admit that net migration of 200,000 per year is too much for a small island such as ours,

It’s a bit early for predictions for 2013. But my feeling is that it could be the year of the unpaid intern, or rather, the year of the paid intern if the campaign to pay people a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work continues to gather pace. Hazel Blears did well to secure cross-party support for a 10-minute-rule bill to outlaw the advertising of unpaid internships. It does seem odd that employers are obliged to pay the national minimum wage but can advertise that they are breaking the law. Campaigners Intern Aware has been pushing this particular cause for some time and should be congratulated for its work

The Daily Mail got very excited last month over ‘a new student craze’ called milking, where students post videos of themselves ‘pouring milk over their heads in public places’: The four-pint fad began in Newcastle and soon spread to Edinburgh, Oxford and other universities. Not to be outdone, the fine gentlemen of St Andrews University have given their own twist on the craze: ‘Champagning’: Robed up, their video speaks for itself. It certainly gives a new meaning to ‘Champagne for the brain’, but a damned waste of fine Pol if you ask me.

Net migration to the UK from April 2011 to March 2012 was 183,000, down by a quarter on 242,000 the year before. That’s the headline figure from today’s Office for National Statistics release, and the government is using it to claim success. Immigration minister Mark Harper said: ‘This shows we are bringing immigration back under control. Our tough policies are taking effect and this marks a significant step towards bringing net migration down from the hundreds of thousands to the tens of thousands by the end of this Parliament.’ But it’s worth looking a bit deeper into the figures. Overall, immigration was at its lowest level since 2004 — when

International students are currently the largest single category of immigrants who count in the net migration figures, which cover all those intending to stay more than a year. In the most recent figures (the year to June 2011) there were 242,000 such students — making up 40 per cent of so-called ‘long term’ immigration. However, as a new report by IPPR sets out, international students are not really ‘long term’ immigrants at all. They are far more likely to return home after a few years than the other main immigration categories of work and family: the evidence suggests only around 15 per cent stay permanently. Clearly, it would be wrong

When I visited the US recently, I got talking to some American teenagers about university. They (like me) had just left school and were trying to decide where to go next. I explained that in the UK, the Government’s plan to raise tuition fees to £9,000 a year had led to riots. Their jaws dropped. They couldn’t understand what the fuss was about. In the US, fees can reach $40 000 a year for the private Ivy League colleges. The reaction in the UK seemed ridiculous to them. They felt we should be grateful that we didn’t have to pay $40,000. [Although, to be fair, some state universities only charge

A month ago I found myself in the space of one week in two different countries, yet in the midsts of what felt like the same phenomenon: the political awakening of a new generation. In both London and Rome, students took to the streets to protest against government policies in numbers and in ways that those who graduated just a few years before would have found anachronistic, odd even. Unsurprisingly, given the historical, political and even emotional differences between Britain and Italy, there were differences between the protests. But as I walked the packed streets, listened to the protests, read their slogans, I heard similar arguments – particularly about the