Moving out day at the Anne Lister College accommodation at the University of York’s Campus East on June 7.
Photographer: Vivian Wan/BloombergBritain’s Famed Universities Near a Financial Cliff
Tuition caps and rising inflation have forced schools to slash costs and recruit more lucrative international students. That strategy is now colliding with limits on immigration.
Where the English city of York used to churn out chocolate, it’s now become known for a dramatically different product: university graduates.
It says everything about the current economy of York that the sites of former chocolate factories just outside the city’s medieval walls are now the place for luxury student flats, complete with a private gym, cinema room, pool tables and more. As factories for Terry’s, Rowntree’s and Craven’s sweets closed over recent decades, they have been replaced with “a lot of tech, biotech industries and a lot of startups” that cluster around the main university, said Councillor Michael Pavlovic, who represents the ward that includes the University of York.