Moving universities northwards will do nothing for the levelling up agenda

If major research universities improved their neighbourhoods, the city of New Haven—the home of Yale University—would be one of the richest and happiest in the state of Connecticut. Instead, New Haven is a pit of poverty and crime in a state that is otherwise known for its wealth and lawfulness.

Equally, Baltimore in Maryland, which is the home of Johns Hopkins University, is so crime and poverty-ridden that HBO set The Wire there.

A person might suppose New Haven and Baltimore would have been even more degraded but for their elite universities; yet, sadly, it may have been the universities that helped degrade the towns, because elite universities in America are dens not only of drugs and alcohol but also of rape. In 2016 the Bureau of Justice Statistics found that, on average, during their time at university, 4 per cent of female undergraduates report being raped, and 11 per cent sexually assaulted.