Thirteen universities took advice on handling student protests from a weapons manufacturer
Lancaster University and the University of Lancashire are among 13 British universities that have taken security strategies and sanctions advice from BAE Systems since August 2024, according to a joint investigation by Liberty Investigates and Al Jazeera. Lancaster says decisions on campus security and events are its own. If you expect to protest on campus, read your university’s protest policy and its student disciplinary procedure first, so you know what sanctions it says can follow.
Eleven arrested as a London inter-university march met counter-protestors
Eleven people were arrested in London on 7 October around a student-led pro-Palestine march organised by the University of London Coalition. The Met had imposed Public Order Act conditions requiring the rally to finish by 2pm, the march to keep moving and face coverings to come off. Four arrests were at the student march and one at the counter-protest, for breaching the Act; five more, outside the Board of Deputies of British Jews, were for incitement of racial hatred.
What a degree costs in 2026-27, nation by nation
Undergraduate tuition in England and Wales is £9,790 a year in 2026, up from £9,535, and in England fees now rise annually with inflation. Northern Irish students pay £4,985 at home, most Scottish students pay nothing in Scotland, and other UK students pay £9,790 in both. The maximum maintenance loan for English students living away from home outside London is £10,830 for 2026-27, up from £10,544.
Flu is running higher than in the past four Septembers
The UK Health Security Agency’s first winter surveillance report of the season says flu activity through September was higher than in the same period in each of the past four winters, although still at baseline levels, with possible signs of an early season. One A(H1N1) virus seen at low levels has drifted from this year’s vaccine. If you are in a group offered a free flu vaccination, UKHSA says now is the time to get it.
UK Health Security Agency, 8 October
Students put procrastination above anxiety as the thing damaging their work
A study of more than 65,000 US students, published in Plos One, found nearly half named procrastination as the thing most harming their academic work, more than twice the number who named depression. Its author, Cambridge affiliated lecturer Itamar Shatz, says procrastination is not laziness: people avoid the difficult feelings a task brings, then carry the stress anyway. A Durham psychologist cautioned that the study is only a snapshot. If that pattern is familiar, our time management guide is where to start.