Different students, or more students?

Jock — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 20:07:53 +0100

Again, (much) closer to home, the Oxford Mail/Times reports that:

Residents near Plater College in Headington, Oxford, have expressed concern about a

new influx of students after the college was sold

for £5.6m to an international language school.

Though I know and respect all those mentioned in the story, I am a little perplexed by this "fear". Plater College was, as the name suggests, a place of learning with students in residence and an ambition to expand, already taking in weekend residential courses and the like before they collapsed.

The site was protected for residential educational use, and indeed when Plater themselves sought to build some flats on a piece of spare land last year planning was turned down because housing use would intensify the pressures on traffic in a narrow private lane. They did however get permission a few years back, not yet acted upon, to increase the number of student rooms from, I think, about 75 to just over 100.

Plater accommodated students. EF will accommodate students. EF's main business throughout most of the year, like many international language schools, is not the hordes of Euro-teens that descend on the city each summer but young adults from overseas mainly spending several months getting their English language skills up to a standard at which they can study at degree levels in English speaking universities.

They are the least likely to bring additional traffic to the area for example. Yet they also tend to save to come here and have disposable money while they are here.

They will hopefully feed much needed overseas student fees into Brookes at the end of their courses with, perhaps, less effort on Brookes's part because they can be recruited locally.

I'm not sure I see the problem. Though it would have been nice (I have to say this bit I suppose) if Brookes themselves had managed to buy the place. Mind you, that outcome would also have involved students staying there.

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Different students, or more students?