Newcastle University, for example, has around a 1:8 ratio of Northern students to Southern students. Ratios like this at many northern universities have sparked students to establish Northern societies that celebrate and protect Northern culture. For example, a student named Lucy at York university originally from Burnley, discovered she was the only Northerner in her 15-person flat, and decided to create a Northern society for a ‘sense of familiarity’.
The BBC article discusses Lucy's revival of a Northern society; it portrays it as jovial and focuses on the positive aspects of what Lucy and others achieved, but fails to consider how this reflects on our society. Northerners being in the minority in Northern academic institutions is not a mystery or something that cannot be explained; it is due to a clear divide within our education system.
Northerners being in the minority in Northern academic institutions is not a mystery or something that cannot be explained; it is due to a clear divide within our education system.
Durham University is one of the best-performing universities in the North and hosts only 10% local students from the Northeast of England. This is because the North struggles disproportionately with poverty and low school funding when compared to the South. 19% of children in the Northeast receive free school meals, compared with just under 10% in the Southeast. 27% of children in the North live in poverty compared to 20% in the South. Children in the North are 57% less likely to go to university than students in London and the South-East. We then wonder why so many of our Northern universities see few northerners attending.
By no fault of their own, Southerners attending Northern universities are in turn contributing to the growing inequality between the North and the South. These Northern powerhouses that receive an overwhelming number of Southern students, for example, York, Durham and Newcastle, will all receive brain drain when these Southern students attend Northern universities. They do contribute to the local economy often through the nightlife; however, once they have finished university and can contribute more to the economy through local jobs and taxation, most graduates instead return to the south for the higher-paying jobs, leaving these Northern cities feeling used.
Ultimately, establishing Northern societies at these universities helps protect Northern culture and allows Northern students to feel at home, but we must ask why this is the case and remember all those Northerners who could not attend university because of an unbalanced education system.