UNIVERSITY CITIES

UNIVERSITY CITIES

One glance at their glossy prospectuses shows that universities today are well aware that students look almost as carefully at their future surroundings as at their chosen courses. Those set in rolling countryside, or a lively city, flaunt their advantages. The lecture room and library are only part of the story, and students are not going to achieve peak performance if they are tied for three or four years to a place they do not like. These pages offer a brief guide to the main student centres. All have at least two universities.

Fashions change quickly among students, and a popular city can soon lose its attractions. London, for example, used to be a magnet for students, but some of the capital’s universities have struggled to fill their places recently because of the high cost of living. Manchester, by contrast, with its student community of nearly 70,000, has become a popular draw while Newcastle is also challenging for the position of the students’ favourite city.

Cost of living variations between cities tend to be the result of differences in the cost of services, including accommodation, transport and entertainment, rather than differences in the price of goods in shops which tend to be similar across the UK. The weekly magazine The Grocer (www.thegrocer.co.uk) produces “The Grocer 33”, a weekly shopping basket survey that provides price information throughout eight regions across the country. It tracks price variations on 33 staple foods across the major supermarket chains within the regions. And it shows that, in the supermarkets at least, food prices are not subject to significant regional variation.

See pages in the 'Safety and Security' section for some information on the level of crime in these major university cities.

The following university towns and cities are profiled in the pages below:

Aberdeen
Bath
Belfast
Birmingham
Brighton
Bristol
Cambridge
Canterbury
Cardiff
Coventry
Dundee
Edinburgh
Glasgow
Lancaster
Leeds
Leicester
Liverpool
London
Manchester
Newcastle
Nottingham
Oxford
Sheffield
Southampton
York