With only a few days to go until Christmas and with cheesy festive music ringing in the nation's ears, the thought of heading home to friends and family is on most people's minds, making it easy to forget that not everyone's Christmas will be such a happy one, writes Gemma Tumelty
Christmas is a lonely time for many students, and some of the most isolated are the thousands of international students stuck on UK campuses, who just cannot afford - on top of the high fees they pay - to go home over the break. As staff and students desert halls and lecture theatres, it is these students who are left behind in the ghost towns that campuses become.
One of the biggest challenges that institutions and students' unions face is to ensure that international students get involved in every area of student life. This is never more pressing than at Christmas, when they are often left with minimal resources, little human presence and only a sprinkling of festive cheer.
It must be very difficult for students at Middlesex University, for example, who have just been told that the library that they rely on will be closed until January 2 as a "cost-cutting measure". This not only leaves local students with no access to study, but it also leaves international students - who rely on the library not only as a place to study, but also as a place where they can meet with other students - stranded in a campus that has effectively shut down.
Organisations like HostUK do their best by bringing together international students at universities and colleges with host families who welcome students in to their homes for a short visit. However, given that international students are often paying over £10,000 a year to study here, you would have thought better facilities could be provided, especially as many institutions are sold as offering a "world class" higher education.
So while we're all enjoying our well earned Christmas break, spare a thought - as you tuck in to your roast turkey (or suitable veggie alternative) - to those students who are paying the most to study here and don't even have the right to basic services and support over Christmas. Surely institutions must see the hypocrisy of using international students as "cash cows" to help plug the higher education funding gap, while ignoring their needs during the period of goodwill to all men?
