A college town or university town is a community, dominated by its university population. The university may be large, or there may be several smaller institutions such as liberal arts colleges clustered, or the residential population may be small, but college towns in all cases are so dubbed because the presence of the educational institution pervades economic and social life. Many local residents may be employed by the university—which may be the largest employer in the community—many businesses cater to the university, the student population may outnumber the local population. In Europe, a university town is characterised by having an ancient university; the economy of the city is related with the university activity and supported by the entire university structure, which may include university hospitals and clinics, printing houses, laboratories, business incubators, student rooms, dining halls, students' unions, student societies, academic festivities. Moreover, the history of the city is intertwined with that of the university.

Many European university towns have not been important places of science and education, but centres of political and social influence throughout the centuries. Besides a educated and transient population, a stereotypical college town has many people in non-traditional lifestyles and subcultures and with a high tolerance for unconventionality in general, has a active musical or cultural scene; the majority of the population is politically liberal. Many have become centres of innovative startups; the concept of a university town has developed since the European Middle Ages, equivalents existed in earlier times and in non-European cultures. For example, in Classical times the city of Athens - no longer having any political or military power, but renowned as the greatest center of learning in the Roman Empire - had many of the characteristics of a university town, is sometimes called such by modern scholars; as in the case of a company town, the large and transient university population may come into conflict with other townspeople.

Students may come from outside the area, subscribe to a different—sometimes radically different—culture. Most students are young people. Economically, the high spending power of the university and of its students in aggregate may inflate the cost of living above that of the region, it is common for university employees to commute from surrounding areas, finding the cost of living in town too expensive. Studentification, in which a growing student population move in large numbers to traditionally non-student neighborhoods, may be perceived as a form of invasion or gentrification, it may be due to university enrollment expanding beyond the capacity of on-campus housing, inadequate zoning enforcement, and/or student culture. Neighborhood associations may work to limit conversion of family homes to student rentals, while some local residents may oppose the construction of large on-campus dormitories or expansion of fraternity and sorority houses, forcing a growing enrollment to seek housing in town.

Moreover, a single-family home can be converted into several smaller rental units, or shared by a number of students whose combined resources exceed those of a typical single-family rental—a strong incentive for absentee landlords to cater to students. In the US, educational institutions are exempted from local taxes, so in the absence of a system for "Payments In Lieu Of Taxes", the university population will disproportionately burden parts of the local public infrastructure, such as roads or law enforcement; some analysts argue that students relieve the burden on other parts of the local public infrastructure, such as local primary and secondary schools, by far the most costly line item in most North American city and town budgets, by providing tax revenues through local sales tax and property tax paid by landlords. When a university expands its facilities, the potential loss of property tax revenue is thus a concern, in addition to local desire to preserve open space or historic neighborhoods.

As a result, local people may resent its students. The students, in turn, may criticize the local residents' taking jobs at the university provided by student tuition and fees, accepting the tax revenues that students generate, but resenting students' lifestyles; some students refer to other inhabitants as a term with somewhat derogatory connotations. This "town and gown" dichotomy notwithstanding and the outside community find a peaceful coexistence, with the town receiving significant economic and cultural benefits from the university, the students adapting to the culture of the town. While noise and other quality of life issues have not been resolved, some advocates of New Urbanism have led the development of neighborhoods in college towns by capitalizing on their proximity to university life. For instance, some universities have developed properties to allow faculty and staff members to walk to work, reducing demand for limited on-campus parking. In many cases, developers have built communities where access to the university is promoted as an advantage.

Student housing is an important component of college towns. In the United States most state universities have 50 percent or more of their enrolled students living off-campus; this trend, which began in t

Undercover is a six-part BBC television drama series co-produced with BBC America, first broadcast beginning 3 April 2016. The series premiered in the United States as a six-hour miniseries on 16 and 17 November 2016 on BBC America. Undercover follows the lives and family of Maya Cobbina, a British lawyer conducting a long-term legal fight to prove the innocence of US death row inmate Rudy Jones, her husband Nick Johnson. After Cobbina is head-hunted for the position of Director of Public Prosecutions, her husband's past – and the circumstances under which the couple first met twenty years earlier – comes back to haunt him. Characters include: Maya Cobbina QC, a criminal law and human rights barrister Director of Public Prosecutions Nick Johnson, a former undercover Detective Sergeant with the Metropolitan Police Rudy Jones, an American prisoner on death row in Louisiana Paul Brightman, a security service officer and former undercover policeman Dominic Carter, Nick's handler during his days as an undercover officer Robert Greenlaw, the Minister of State for Justice Clemency'Clem' Johnson and Nick's 19-year-old daughter Dan Johnson and Nick's 18-year-old son, who has a learning disability Ella Johnson and Nick's youngest child Abigail Strickland, a former undercover Metropolitan Police officer John Halliday, the Crown Prosecution Service Chief Executive and Maya's deputy Michael Antwi, an anti-racism campaigner Julia Redhead, a tabloid reporter for the Daily Metro and Maya's best friend Jimmy, an employee in Maya's chambers The series was written by Peter Moffat, directed by James Hawes and produced by Richard Stokes.

Moffat took inspiration for the fictional drama from real-life revelations about British police officers who had formed long-term relationships with activists they were investigating while undercover, as well as from the London Metropolitan Police Service's secret surveillance of the family of murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence. The opening episode was watched by 5.2 million viewers. Writing in British daily newspaper The Guardian, Chitra Ramaswamy admitted: "I came to Peter Moffat's excellent drama knowing nothing and was confused, though gripped nonetheless. Why was it called Undercover when it's about a lawyer on the brink of becoming the first black director of public prosecutions? Turns out it's called Undercover because of what awaits Maya at home; as well as being the ideal husband, Nick is an ex-undercover cop, deceiving his wife for 20 years." She added: "Thankfully Moffat's writing is so good and the direction so assured I didn't mind not having a clue what was going on if at times it felt like at least three different dramas were playing out in tandem."

Ramaswamy judged Okonedo "a criminally underused actor in Britain. It's wonderful to see her getting a role. It's a testament to Lester that his Nick is so likable, a compassionate family man mired in a hell of his own making." Undercover at BBC Programmes Undercover on IMDb

Sarah Louise Young is a New Zealand immunology academic, as of 2019 is a full professor and head of pathology at the University of Otago. After a 2000 PhD titled'Immunological responses to live and live recombinant BCG in a murine model' at the University of Otago, a post-doc at Cancer Research UK, Young returned to Otago rising to full professor. Mears, Rachel A. Craven, Sarah Hanrahan, Nick Totty, Carol Upton, Sarah L. Young, Poulam Patel, Peter J. Selby, Rosamonde E. Banks. "Proteomic analysis of melanoma‐derived exosomes by two‐dimensional polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis and mass spectrometry." Proteomics 4, no. 12: 4019-4031. Sutherland, Tim JT, Jan O. Cowan, Sarah Young, Ailsa Goulding, Andrea M. Grant, Avis Williamson, Karen Brassett, G. Peter Herbison, D. Robin Taylor. "The association between obesity and asthma: interactions between systemic and airway inflammation." American journal of respiratory and critical care medicine 178, no. 5: 469-475. Young, Sarah L. Mary A. Simon, Margaret A. Baird, Gerald W. Tannock, Rodrigo Bibiloni, Kate Spencely, Juliette M. Lane et al.

"Bifidobacterial species differentially affect expression of cell surface markers and cytokines of dendritic cells harvested from cord blood." Clin. Diagn. Lab. Immunol. 11, no. 4: 686-690. Kim, Dong Won, Sarah L. Young, David R. Grattan, Christine L. Jasoni. "Obesity during pregnancy disrupts placental morphology, cell proliferation, inflammation in a sex-specific manner across gestation in the mouse." Biology of reproduction 90, no. 6: 130-1. Win, Stephanie J. Vernon K. Ward, P. Rod Dunbar, Sarah L. Young, Margaret A. Baird. "Cross‐presentation of epitopes on virus‐like particles via the MHC I receptor recycling pathway." Immunology and cell biology 89, no. 6: 681-688. Sarah Young on Twitter Sarah Young publications indexed by Google Scholar Sarah Young on LinkedIn