Social Bubbles

One can understand, given the Covid-19 pandemic and its effects on UK University activity and finances, why some of these Higher Education establishments are thinking of engineering 'social bubbles' (https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/jun/03/uk-universities-create-social-bubbles-campus-reopen-students-coronavirus) on their campuses. These 'bubbles' are intended to group students together by virtue of a common degree scheme and their year of study to limit the transmission of the virus. So, effectively, students would broadly live, as a homogeneous colony (perhaps in shared student accommodation as well as getting the same exposure to teaching). There are some downsides to this suggestion. The most important is that the very concept of a University is that it is a place where many disciplines interact. That 'flow of ideas' would be lost in an 'inbred' structure (personally speaking, I have always been an enthusiast for the interfaces between disciplines as that is where, in my view, the most interesting developments occur- so, I would say that wouldn't I?). There are also a myriad of, perhaps more minor, difficulties with such a scheme including that a) not all students live on campus; b) some students may want to change course; c) hostilities may develop in shared accommodation, necessitating relocation; d) many degree schemes now share modules and e) in spite of compartmentalisation, some students will form (or already have) romantic and friendship attachments, outside 'their' circle. Students, contrary to popular belief, don't spend all their time studying their degree material. I think it would be very difficult to establish and maintain social bubbles in a University setting.