As I said, close to fraud. The leaked SAGE minutes show that they were saying all lectures at least for the first term should be online/distance learning. Students sold a dummy (although, arguably,they can’t be bright enough to be at a proper university they could not see that).

The Universities, heavily in the ear of our Government are largely to blame here.
Not wanting to be put in a position where they may need to think about any refunds for accommodation, they willfully and determinedly encouraged all students to attend.
No staggered or later starts and look at the bloody mess.
The utter bilge and nonsense about "missing freshers" was ridiculous and this AGAIN falls directly at the feet of our Government.

It's a good job they arent sorting our the brewery trip

It’s not just the university lobby it’s the buy-to-let in university cities lobby .

Knocked on the head beforehand.

Having looked a little further into this, fully catered options are still being "sold" at a number of Uni's, with the main aspect being a full "dinner" each day.
Therefore, back to my earlier point, if you have paid for lunch and dinner and are then given "snacks" instead, surely you are being short changed ?
I relaise that, amongst the myriad of issues that the kids and Uni's are trying to deal with including not being able to run the canteen's etc, looking after those on the "gold accommodation package" will be well down the list but, they certainly aren't getting what they paid for.

It seems clear that there should have been a delay to the start of the year, with on line working (probably from home) being a far more sensible option and then perhaps the virus numbers, particularly amongst the 18 - 25's may not have spiked.

It also appears that this was suggested but, dismissed by those "in charge" and now we have much tighter restrictions for all.

Great work again Bojo.

It was never a thing back in the day and wasn't available for my eldest but, some of the "better" Uni's were certainly offering it when my lad went.
Personally, I thought that the "looking after yourself" was one of the main "tests" for getting through and I was amazed to see the "fully catered for" option.
Some would say that we are indeed too soft on the kids today and whilst I can see the advantage for anyone that has "issues", it didn't quite sit right.
Again, some of the places had en suite facilities akin to a decent hotel, a long way remove from the perceived student accommodation that we all hear so much about.

The obvious thing to do is shut the universities making the students work from home and see the impact this has on the figures for certain areas. I would guess the majority will be no worse off because at least they would no longer be locked in.

Whether at Uni or at home most would be out on the razz in some format, even with closed pubs

It's too late now, the horse bolted from the stable 6 weeks ago
Freshers week is one of the highlights of any students time at uni, meeting lots of NEW people and getting to know housemates etc.
Circa 2,000,000 young people moving house, into new areas and partying hard.

It's difficult to imagine a better "hot bed" for a virus spreading than these circumstances.

Now, having encouraged all students to return and with virus numbers rapidly increasing, the students are left, isolated to their accommodation and working on line.

The alternative was to delay or stagger their move to (or back to) Uni and tell them to study on line, until they could return.

The rocket scientist in me, still thinks the latter of these options would have been better for the students and better for the locals in the area where they were moving to.

WTF were those "in charge" actually thinking, it beggars belief and now, EVERYONE is facing much stricter rules and a further lockdown, foe all of us seems inevitable.

Last week over 2000 students alone diagnosed with Covid in Newcastle

This week the number of students in Durham went up from 200 new cases to 1000 cases.

On;y an idiot could have seen that not coming

Aye the same idiot who doesn’t want kids from poorer families to be fed.

Is there a stronger version that cba with young adults and instead only targets the over 50s?

Surely if they are only infecting each other then its a good thing if the incidence of re-infection is miniscule - herd immunity?

Most of these have mild or no symptoms at all

This. How many of these students have died? None. What a surprise!