£99,987 and counting: graduates trapped by ballooning student loans
As their debts rise, graduates reveal how loans are reshaping careers, finances and faith in the system
“I believe funding study from general taxes is a good thing for the UK and despise the older generations who went to university for not paying their share and lumping it onto my generation.” www.theguardian.com/money/2026/f...
06.02.2026 16:20 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
The Universities’ Doom Spiral – Can Britain avert disaster?
Podcast Episode · Oh God, What Now? · 03/02/2026 · 1h
This is excellent -highly recommended. I say this as someone who has worked in the university sector for 40 years. Cap doff to @gsoh31.bsky.social podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/o...
04.02.2026 11:39 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Winter Sun. On campus @uniofreading.bsky.social
14.01.2026 10:05 — 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
It all started with the Trent Outrage..
09.01.2026 22:16 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
It all started with the Trent Outrage…
09.01.2026 22:15 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Cold snap grips UK and Europe – in pictures
UK weather warnings for frost and ice have been extended into next week and temperatures are forecast to plunge across central, western and south-west Europe
Note the increasing tendancy of specifying the UK and Europe as if they are separate places. Geographically (and meteorologically) the UK remains part of Europe. “Cold snap grips Europe’ would have been fine. www.theguardian.com/world/galler...
05.01.2026 13:48 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Surely it’s some sort of spoof?
02.01.2026 10:19 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Hairy Turkey Tail?
31.12.2025 12:15 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
There are those who still maintain it’s in Berkshire
30.12.2025 12:30 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
It’s possible to have a nice evening walk even if you live in Reading. Fabulous campus @uniofreading.bsky.social
26.12.2025 17:57 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
City & Guilds to shrink UK workforce amid £22m cost-cutting drive
Training and qualifications body, acquired by private Greek firm in October, to become ‘leaner organisation’
City & Guilds is a brand that is synonymous internationally with skills and training. The headlines are entirely predictable following its acquisition in October by an offshore commercial entrepreneur. The irony is rich. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...
14.12.2025 08:17 — 👍 0 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0
Young people on benefits to be offered construction and hospitality work
The government says it will fund training and work experience for 350,000 not in work or education.
It would be nice if this initiative formed part of a coherent strategy which included quality of training provision and productivity improvement. Systemic problems need systemic solutions. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
07.12.2025 09:01 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
UCU strike ballot fails after 60 per cent of members don’t vote
UK’s biggest academic union unable to pursue national industrial action over pay and job cuts after it fails to meet minimum turnout threshold
There are no winners here. The 39% partication rate speaks to the desperate sense of disillusionment among HE staff. This is unlikely to improve given the brutal context of ongoing cuts and redundancies. I fear for the future. www.timeshighereducation.com/news/ucu-str...
02.12.2025 20:14 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
It's official: 400 redundancies and a campus closure. At-risk staff will get a letter next week. Absolutely no serious consideration of any of the union's counterproposals.
Please share widely.
02.12.2025 16:52 — 👍 87 🔁 97 💬 6 📌 32
Bruce Willis from Die Hard, looking downward out of a broken window with the text "welcome to the party, pal"
Frozen tax brackets upsetting you? Going to have the same salary for years on end? Congratulations, you're just feeling what academia has been like since 2018
28.11.2025 10:54 — 👍 5 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
26.11.2025 06:55 — 👍 385 🔁 206 💬 18 📌 17
Gad Rausing Assoc Prof. of Viking-Age Archaeology, Oxford
Archaeologist at North Yorkshire Historic Environment Record: special interest in Viking-Age Britain and the Great Heathen Army
Nobody knows politics and policy like we do.
Senior Editor (Politics), New Statesman
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Professor, historian, husband, dad, scouser, gobby. Author of Demobbed (2009), Browned Off & Bloody-Minded (2015), Britain at Bay (2020), Advance Britannia (2025). “Awesome but a bit boring” (RMP). Personal account.
CBE.
Previously: UK Labour Party Leader in EurParliament, Yorks&Humber MEP, NEC, ShadowCabinet.
Currently: EM, LME, writing & lecturing
Translator and textbook writer. Post on climate, energy, health, Spain, Brexit and other stuff.
Produce VoiceMap audio tours of Andalucía: https://voicemap.me/publisher/ben-barclay#tours
https://andalucia-bound.com
@andalucia-bound.bsky.social
Heritage & Archaeology Manager at Chilterns National Landscape; prehistorian, flyfisher, ferroequinologist. Jack of some trades, master of none. FSA
Opinions are all my own...
Investigating the Iron Age and Roman period in SW Britain. Bournemouth University #HillfortsWednesday Posts (mostly) by Miles Russell
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Historian, artist, tour guide and FSAScot. A lover of legend and folklore.
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Economics writer. Author.
Expect history, economics, finance and other stuff.
Wrote Two Hundred Years of Muddling Through.
Blood and Treasure, on the economics of war, out now.
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Historian of Britain and colonialism, material culture, the EIC. Also works on equalities, museums, open access & research policy. Download the EIC @ Home open access volume here: https://www.uclpress.co.uk/products/88277 (or individual chapters via JSTOR)
