Nottingham City Council is calling on students across the city to 'pack up and clean up' as the end of the University year approaches.

As final exams and celebrations are the main items on the agenda for students as they prepare to leave the city, cleaning up waste is often over looked which results in houses and neighbourhoods being left in a mess.

2 more students studying at Edinburgh University are being monitored for swine flu, Scotland now has 14 confirmed cases, eight probable cases and eight possible cases, including four in Lothians.

BBC Health have provided useful information on swine flu, including it's symptoms and Q&A. The full article can be viewed here : http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8021958.stm [ Read More.. ]

Applications to study at the University of Edinburgh have increased by 4 per cent during 2008-2009, according to statistics released by UCAS.

This is slightly below an overall increase in applications to Scottish institutions of 5.7 per cent and UK wide increase of 7.8 per cent.

The increases have been attributed to the onset of recession within the UK, with past trends showing similar increases at times of economic downturn.

The 5 per cent rise across Scotland shows a 3.5 per cent increase in school leaver applicants, a 12 per cent increase for school leavers and notably a 14 per cent rise in the number of international applications. Dundee University saw the highest increase with applications up by 16.5 per cent, with Glasgow University on 14.3 per cent.

The applications data also revealed that Law remains the most popular subject of study, while there were also significant increases in economics and science based subjects. Notably there was a 29 per cent increase in applications to study Japanese.

Commenting on the current economic context to these increases, a spokeswoman for Universities Scotland stated, “During times of economic difficulty, people tend to turn to education because other options in the jobs market are restricted,”.

It seems that this thinking could explain the 12 per cent increase in applications from mature students as they try to gain advantage in an increasingly difficult job market.

The Guardian have put together a University league table for 2010.

All UK universities ranked by the Guardian according to teaching excellence.

For the full list please visit http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/table/2009/may/12/university-league-table [ Read More.. ]

A Varsity survey has suggested that 10% of students at Cambridge admit to turning to drugs to help them with their studies.

The study of 1,000 students has revealed that one in ten respondents has taken drugs such as Modafinil, Ritalin and Adderall, without prescription.

On top of this figure one third of respondents would take ‘concentration-enhancing’ medication given the opportunity.

Students are planning to live at home while they attend university in order to save money in the recession, it is claimed.

The National Union of Students (NUS) survey found that many young people are thinking of new ways to complete higher education on the cheap.

Many students are thinking of their hip-pockets to complete higher education on the cheap rather than go to universities with better facilities or teachers.

Students are not the first target group that springs to mind for developers. But in these shaky market conditions they represent a solid tenant base. In the run-up to Easter, undergraduates arrange their housing for the following academic year. Negotiations between friends may become fraught, as may phone calls home, during which worried parents are urged to part with sizeable deposits to secure rental properties that they have never seen - and which will not be lived in for a further six months.

There is little a landlord or managing agent likes better than the signature of a parental guarantor on a tenancy agreement. This near-certainty of payment is why the student rental market is seen as a safe bet. And with students signing up six months in advance, yields can be predicted with more foresight than in the regular lettings market.

The UK's biggest student housing website, accommodation for students.com, reports that student rents have increased by 19 per cent over the past five years and by 1.5 per cent in the past year; £62.40 is now the average student rent per week in the UK. In light of the fluctuations over the past 18 months in the wider rental market, an increasing number of mainstream landlords may now tailor their portfolios to a specific part of the market, such as students or the elderly.

While the annual supply of students is fairly recession-proof, the constancy of the student market may be less stable than it appears if the findings of the UK Youth Parliament's recent survey are to be believed. Thirty-six per cent of the 1,000-plus young people surveyed said that the recession would influence their choice of university, perhaps causing them to pick one near by that would enable them to live at home.

Source: Time Online
For the full article please visit: http://property.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/property/investment/article6021093.ece

Facebook users may feel socially successful in cyberspace but they are more likely to perform poorly in exams, according to new research into the academic impact of the social networking website.

The majority of students who use Facebook every day are underachieving by as much as an entire grade compared with those who shun the site.

Researchers have discovered how students who spend their time accumulating friends, chatting and "poking" others on the site may devote as little as one hour a week to their academic work.

A skint student has already raised £1,000 towards his university fees - thanks to an Internet brainwave.

Skint Spyros Pyrgiotis, 23, is the youngest person ever to secure a place on a prestigious MBA course.

But with no job and multiple loan refusals the budding entrepreneur turned to the internet to fund his £17,000 course fees.

His website www. thetextpage .com is just that - a page full of text which links to advertisers websites.

A new system was introduced earlier this month controlling the way in which visa nationals have to apply for visas to work and study in the UK.

The system is points-based, like the one operated in Australia. Students form a very significant percentage of the number of migrants that come to the UK every year and the government says that it is committed to encouraging people from overseas to study and train in Britain: that makes sense, because international students directly contribute £2.5 billion to the UK economy in tuition fees alone and Pamela Lenton, Doctor of Economics at the University of Sheffield (August 2007) put the total annual value of international students at nearly £8.5 billion!