The Newsagents podcast is brought to you by HSBC UK, opening up a world of opportunity.

This is a global player original podcast.

I am standing in Fatharfield in Manchester.

For those of you don't know, Manchester, Fallofield is a very student-dominated area

and I'm just by one of the biggest bits of student accommodation

that this massive university has, remember, well north of 20,000 students.

And we're here because a rent strike has just started.

And the rent strike has started because so many first year students

in particular who take up their places in halls here are so appalled by the quality of the accommodation

that they've got and we're going to be exploring that issue and you're going to hear a little bit

about that I think it'll be surprised by what you hear but also we're using it partly to get at a much wider issue,

which is the potential failure of university education in Britain.

And I don't mean failure in terms of Britain's place

in the international global league tables for particular universities.

On that score, Britain still does extremely well. Now, I'm

talking about a comprehensive failure of education itself for students. And in particular, a failure

of justice and equity about students getting what they ought to be getting given the enormous amount of money

that they're paying and on top of that something even worse the potential that universities

far from being an engine of social mobility are becoming something which is making social mobility

harder it's lewis. Welcome to the Newsagents. The Newsagents.

Right, so I'm back at Newsagents HQ and we're going to be returning to Manchester in a moment.

But first, for a quick rundown of what we're trying to do today, we're going to be taking you through

...