Drop-in clinics for students starting university
Young people in Scotland are being offered free meningitis B vaccination ahead of the new academic year, with health boards running drop-in clinics, and universities including Glasgow emailing students to encourage uptake. It follows two outbreaks in England involving the B strain, which the MenACWY vaccine given at school does not cover. Scotland is the first part of Great Britain to offer this to students. GP registration and staying healthy covers the rest.
Value for money, as students rate it
StudentCrowd’s value-for-money rankings put Queen’s Belfast highest among Russell Group universities, with Oxford seventh and Cambridge outside the top 20. Value for money in these surveys reflects cost of living as much as teaching — which is why cities with cheap rents do well and London does not.
Is apprenticeship policy pushing universities out?
An argument that the direction of apprenticeship policy is quietly moving provision away from universities towards other providers, and that students, institutions and employers all lose if degree apprenticeships end up outside higher education. With the Prime Minister promising apprenticeships a central role, this is the detail to watch.