Students need relief from university accommodation costs, caller tells LBC
11 November 2020, 17:41
Students need relief from university accommodation costs, caller tells LBC
This is the moment a caller told LBC that university students should be given "some relief" from accommodation costs incurred during the Covid crisis.
Dave from Uxbridge made the comment to LBC's Eddie Mair after the Government announced that students in England will have a seven-day window to see their families for Christmas.
Universities have been told to end in-person teaching and switch to online classes by early December to accommodate students leaving campuses.
The Government said it will work closely with universities to establish mass testing capacity, with Covid-19 tests offered to as many students as possible.
University students in England could be tested for coronavirus from the end of November
Dave, whose own daughter is currently at university, said: "My daughter is at university at the moment. She's having a terrible time because it's effectively an open prison...and she's paying an awful lot for the accommodation.
"And she is tied into [paying for accommodation] until after this departure window and for the whole of the year.
"There needs to be to some relief from [these] accommodation costs. If they're going to do it all alone, they might as well do it at home and save the costs..."
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Speaking of his daughter, Dave also said: "She's doing the best that she can but it's not the university experience she was expecting."
He later added: "The universities are just coining it in because they're stuck with all this accommodation that they want pupils [in to] fund their universities, and yet they're not offering the same service..."
