is complete. We now have a generation of consumers, who will not ask too many questions of the system (even now when it is so close to collapse).

Same on my campus. It's all a bit too identikit and safe; all too focused on what job they'll get afterwards to pay of the loans and worryingly incurious about so many things. They're all perfectly pleasant and nice, but there's not much there except the desire to have someone show them the money.

Attempts to prick them and get them to think about the world around them in any real depth meet with puzzlement and general inertia, as if they can't believe that there might be any other way than the current madness.

Depressing innit?

started Uni a couple of weeks ago. All over the summer I gave her stick about surviving on a bag of pasta and a bottle of vodka a week. She was most indignant and got all haughty with me, insisting that the stereotypical view of students is outdated yada yada yada.

2 days after dropping her off I phoned to see how she was settling in. I asked if she was eating ok and her reply was "I skipped breakfast 'cus I was too hungover so I had a cheese toastie for lunch and I'm doing myself a pot noodle now to eat while I'm getting ready to go out"

I quietly replaced the reciever and rolled around the floor laughing.

...that used to result in the varied yoof subcultures was the fact that kids used to be much more hidebound by genre than they are now. Goth wasn't just a fashion: it was a type of music, and that's what you listened to. Straying outside your chosen representative genre was risky in terms of peer acceptance. Ditto grebo. Ditto raver/townie. Ditto - in my day - indie kid or Britpopper.

Those distinctions aren't there now because intelligent kids listen to everything. They don't see anything wrong with listening to Rihanna, Led Zeppelin, Burial and Paramore all mixed up next to each other. I think that's great (well, maybe not the Paramore bit).

What I think's less great is the general lack of political engagement. But I do understand why: all mainstream electable politicians look and sound the same and are singing from the same consensus-sheet. Their vocal mannerisms are the same, they all have the "honest and open" gestures they learned from Tony. Why should they mean anything to our kids when they don't mean anything to us? And for them, that's all politicians have ever been. They can't remember Michael Foot or Alan Clark.

And as for consumerism: well. They're going to have to get used to a lot less of that for a fair old while.

on the whole I think the present bunch have had a bum deal. Of course they are worried about finances: they are taking the the biggest economic risk of their lives, as they will leave with a degree and around £35-55K worth of debt. Meanwhile I had a full grant and free tutition fees. I could afford to waste time and money, wondering What It Is All About.

Don't blame ver kids it's the system innit.

Three years ago a bastard property developer bought the house next to ours and turned it into accommodation for 12 students. As you can imagine, this was not a popular move on a quiet suburban street where the worse we'd previously had to worry was the occasional badly parked car during the school run, or an urban fox rummaging through the garden of a night. We feared the worse: all-night parties, bottles and vomit all over the pavement, litter scattered everywhere...

Not a bit of it. In three years involving three different sets of students, there's been one party and even then they had the good manners to let us know in advance. They occasionally leave their recycling bins out in the street overnight after they've been emptied, which upsets some of the neighbourhood watch brigade, but they're pretty much perfect neighbours.

I don't know whether to rejoice at the ongoing and totally unexpected peace and quiet, or lament the death of "student life"...

... some student protests not that long ago. What was name, Charlie Gilmore?

And if I was getting charged £9,000 a year for my uni education, you're damn right I'd be concerned about what I'd be earning afterwards, and what sort of service I was getting from lecturers as well.

I teach at university & agree with much of what has been said. One thing to bear in mind is this: consumerism is now built into the way university education is organised and funded in a way that students of my generation (I was an undergraduate in the 70s) would have found utterly alien. Students starting next year are probably going to leave three years later with debts of about £50,000. Naturally enough, the consequences of this are rarely going to be far from their minds, and the question they are asked at the end of their studies (which we would have found weird) - "do you think your course represented value for money?" - is of enormous importance to them. We in the 70s never thought of ourselves as paying customers; students now are more or less forced to think of themselves in that way.

I look at various youngsters in the extended family and see people who have a lot more self-confidence than most youngsters back in my day. They've generally travelled, have more awareness of the world, are technically savvy, have higher expectations, are prepared to speak out and they're pretty bright. They're also a lot less sexist and racist. And, just like in my day, some of them are lazy and some of them work ferociously hard.

I know it's fashionable to bemoan young people's inability to do mental arithmetic or to know the capital of Peru. Whether that's entirely the case and whether they're less engaged is very debatable - but they are different. And that's a good thing because it's a different world to 30 years ago and we need a different generation to take it forward.

(NB The thing I find odd is that in my day 10% of school leavers went to Uni and the gap between poor and rich was wide. Today, 50% of school leavers go into tertiary education and that gap is a chasm.)

In the old days, even up to my generation, the decision to go to university was often a lifestyle choice, as much as an educational one.

Nowadays, kids can't afford to see it that way. They're going to incur an awful lot of debt and therefore need to weigh up whether it is financially worthwhile for them.

So yes, of course they take it more seriously than the stereotypical Che Guevara t-shirted cliche, rising at 4pm to watch Countdown.

The kids aren't to blame for any of this. Don't be disappointed with them, be disappointed with the mess your own generation has left them in.

They do appear pretty homogenous. Times and trends and all that. The lack of the radical lefty groups, though, is interesting. Some reasons, I suspect. How many student radicals remain as such as they grow up? Not many. How have student radicals changed things over the years? Not a jot. Socialist Worker and the rest have withered on the vine. Students today aren't apathetic. They're realistic.

As regards student debt, when I cashed my first paycheck in 1991, I was about £12k in debt and interest rates were 14%. I didn't hang about in trying to pay that lot off.

then presumably, there were only sufficient university places for that 10%. I wonder if the same 'elite' 10% still go to those old-established 'first division' universities, whereas the 40% of kids who have joined the university system since the 1970s are being accommodated in the 'new universities'.

As I see it many of these 'new universities' have a credibility problem when compared the the Russell Group.

I have a 17 year old daughter and I've certainly suggested to her that, for a degree to be of value, she needs to get into a Russell Group university and that getting 3 years experience in a job might well be better than doing, say, Media Studies at Worcester University.

Students now choose universities and degrees on a number of criteria. One of those is the employability of graduates six months after graduating. Universities are obliged to publish statistics indicating the percentage of graduates going into employment in that or another field or who go on to postgraduate studies.

As far as former polytechnics are concerned, I'm not qualified to comment on so-called soft degrees but it's evident that there are now at least four tiers of higher education institutions in the UK: the Russell Group, redbrick universities, post-1992 institutions and colleges whose degrees are usually validated by the next tier up. Many of the post-1992 universities teach a wide range of students and while I'd agree that those who compete with Russell Group universities in offering similar subjects are often at a disadvantage, those same places offer valuable courses in, say, design-related subjects which the elite institutions can't or won't. After all, Jonathan Ive of Apple did his degree at what used to be Newcastle Polytechnic, where I did my first degree, too. It was a lifeline for me, not a lifestyle choice - it got me out of dead-end jobs where I'd been stuck for years and on to postgrad courses at a Russell Group university and on then to teach at one such university and to write and publish as well.

And yes, as well as researching, I care about teaching and that the students in my care have a great experience

http:

... The Daily Telegraph reports that there's at least one "well paid" "fun" and "safe" environment you can work in whilst you study.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/8806091/Spearmint-Rhi...

Honestly, if I were a woman who had to do that to pay for an education, you can be damn sure I'd be demanding about what precisely it had to offer.

...as in Top Cat? No, students have been known to call me Dr Google or even you bastard (that'll be you bastard, *sir*). Toffee was a real, and much missed cat who checked out last year at the age of 21 - sighs audibly...

...of a law degree at Glasgow University. I don't have to pay fees thankfully, but I'm still going to be in a helluva load of debt next year when I graduate due to living expenses and such. I don't really know what I'm going to do!

Now, I wouldn't say that I, nor my friends or peers, are in general disinterested or "guileless". Loads of people are into sports and beer, but if you delve a bit deeper you'll find that in most cases they'll have a good bit to say about foreign films, obscure music, books and politics. It's worth bearing in mind that the ubiquity of the internet make the former three easier to find than ever, and the latter easier to research and discuss.

I actually welcome the lack of goths, punks and hippies - to me it just represents a breakdown of cliques, and wider acceptance.

As for political activities - nearly everyone I know, rich or poor, is outraged at the funding situation south of the border, and the circumstances our friends from England are faced with, and plenty of students have been involved in protests. As a reaction to university budget cuts, another group of students (mainly idiots, unfortunately) "occupied" a disused university building for about three months, eventually being evicted by the police.

Neither are we apathetic about the world as a whole. I, along with a number of friends, collectively raised about £45,000 to improve schools in East Africa by climbing Mount Kilimanjaro. Yes, we had a really good holiday after it all, but we never forgot why we were there in the first place. After meeting some of these kids, you really couldn't.

We work hard and play hard, you know? We're alright really.

Officially the most hateful phrase in the world.