Loneliness in halls is the majority experience, not the exception
A poll has found more than two-thirds of students in university accommodation feel lonely or isolated, and most of them believe the accommodation itself contributes — long corridors, en-suite rooms with no reason to leave them, and kitchens too small to sit in. If that is your first term, the useful thing to know is that it is the common experience rather than a personal failure. Making friends at university covers what actually helps.
“They’re all from London and Cambridge”: northern students at York
The Guardian follows York University’s Northern Society, formed by students who arrived to find their accent and background in a minority at a northern university. It is a small story about a large one — the class and regional sorting that decides who ends up where — and it is unusually honest about what that feels like day to day. The class divide at university covers the same ground.
The immigration white paper is costing schools their language and physics teachers
A lecturer at St Mary’s Twickenham sets out how the 2025 immigration white paper has made it harder to recruit and keep international trainee teachers in modern languages and physics — the two subjects already shortest of staff. It reaches students at both ends: fewer specialist teachers in schools, and fewer applicants arriving with a language A-level for university courses that are already closing.
Getting back into it after the break
A practical piece on restarting academic work after Christmas, when the term’s deadlines are close and the holiday has erased every habit that made the first term work. The advice is to rebuild the timetable before attempting the work, and to start with the task you understand rather than the one that matters most. Time management covers keeping it going.