Firstly, I do support vocational courses and more varied options. In theory these are fantastic concepts allowing more people to continue their education by studying what they want instead of what they feel they are supposed to.

What then is my problem?

It is twofold:

1. Universities are increasingly becoming places that focus on training rather than learning. People do not see beyond and around their chosen paths.

2. Our culture produces people whose only interest is in themselves. In their own hedonistic pursuits and their own myopic view of the world.

The result :Universities full of students with closed minds.

Gone are the days when students sat around pretentiously talking abut philosophy and politics. Instead the atmosphere is one of lager-loutism and unawareness of the contents of newspapers.

Before I came to university I hated the concept of students. Now having found them to be different from my expectations I cast my eyes about hoping to find students who still fit my once hated cliche. At least they would care and think (in a lazy hazy way perhaps, but thought is thought).

What makes me angry about the contemporary student ethos is that it is without excuse. Students are an intellectual elite. They are educationally and financially privileged. They have (on the whole) had easy middle-class lives (with their own hardships I’m sure, but still!) They have all the advantages that are denied to so many people and yet they still don’t give a shit. The number of students who regularly read The Sun is ridiculous.

I am not an elitist. I believe in education for all. But I also believe in University as a place where people should be able to expand their minds, not keep them closed.

It is quite frankly ridiculous that - in a time where debt for students is a matter of course, fees are charged and poor people are denied university education due to lack of support - students don’t even really fight for an alternative. These things directly affect them for God’s sake. They can’t even raise themselves to selfish protest let alone to try to do something about third world debt, crazy American policies or a government Labour in name only.

I must emphasise that these views stem from my own experience of a few universities. They may be misjudgements based on examples that don’t fit the norm. Not all students are like this. There are people nearer to the old student stereotype, but they seem to me to be in a minority.

As far as I can see it is a hopeless state of affairs in which nobody will win. If people like these are our future high-flyers then we shouldn’t worry about flying too high. Though I’m sure their lack of imagination will help them to lead this country down the path already forged for them.