University The purpose of a university education has changed dramatically over the last few years. Fifty years ago, a university education was a highly specialised academic pursuit. You spent three years in one small area of study on the off-chance you would go on to do research. And if you didn't, no matter. Your degree in Roman Fireplace Construction 55BC-43AD wouldn't help your dinner-party conversation, but the mere fact of having a degree would impress employers. Not now. You can do a degree in anything: TV Soaps, Soccer, Rock Music. Great for interesting people at parties, but not impressing employers. Thirty years ago, university was a place where young people could spend three years experimenting with drink, drugs and sex for the first time. Not now. They've already done it all at school. Twenty years ago, student grants were pretty good. You could buy most of your course books and still have enough left to eat out, go to parties and concerts, and tour Europe by rail each summer. Not now. You have to pay £1,000 per year towards tuition. Grants are less than £2,000 per year, with top-up loans of the same amount available. The average student has debts of £3,000. Life is hard for today's students. After eating out, going to parties and concerts, and touring Europe, they have no money left for their course books. The drop-out rate is now 20 per cent, much higher than ever before. Possibly this is because of money problems. Or perhaps the party just went on much longer than they expected. Fifteen years ago, university was a place for the country's top 15% youngsters. It would sharpen their minds on a degree and guarantee them the most important jobs in British society: captains of industry, top civil servants, cabinet ministers, rock stars. Not now. Two-thirds of all youngsters go to higher education, there are a million full-time students, and being a graduate is nothing special. A job is not guaranteed. (Rock stars these days are formed by marketing companies through small ads rather than at Art College.) The English university experience is different from Europe. In France, for example, students typically live at home and attend their local university. Here, a student who lives in Newcastle might go to Exeter University, and vice-versa. They'll say it's because it offers the best course for them, but the real reason is so they can live away from home. In their Hall of Residence room they can neglect to clean up, come and go at any hour of day or night, have friends when they like, and feel totally independent. (But still take their dirty washing home in a bag for mum at the end of every term.) In Germany, university education is a long process, often taking well into your 30s. Here, you've graduated by 22. Your parents can proudly put a picture of you with a silly black gown, mortar board and scroll, when in fact you spent three years wearing unironed T shirts, jeans and trainers. But having fast graduation is probably better for the economy - certainly for train companies: graduates have to pay full, non-student-rates fares that much sooner. Universities in England are all publicly funded (except for the University of Buckingham, our only private university, though there are of course many private institutions offering specialist qualifications). Here is our image of them and their students: 'Oxbridge' A term of convenience meaning 'Oxford and Cambridge'. (Many a confused school student has searched in vain for 'Oxbridge' on the atlas.) They are still considered the most prestigious. Each consists of many effectively self-governing, even rival, colleges. You apply for entry to a college, not to the university. Through historical links, each college has its own character. Magdalen College, Oxford (pronounced 'mordlin') is traditionally full of wealthy upper-class types - the 'Oxbridge student' of popular imagination. We picture a brilliant, arrogant young man or woman theorising about literature or philosophy, and being cut urbanely down to size by their tutor over sherry in a centuries-old study. One example of how Oxbridge colleges think themselves superior: an MA (Master of Arts) is gained at other universities through a year's post-graduate study. But Oxford students, for example, merely have to wait seven years and send off a cheque for £14, getting their MA by return of post. Typical graduate Highly achieving professional types: partners in pensions and legal firms, top-flight managers, heavyweight broadcasters and writers, academics, politicians (eg Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair). Also a great many TV comedians (perhaps the tradition of political satire is explained by the fact that the comedians were student colleagues of the politicians, and they hated each other then too). Red brick universities Outside Oxbridge, there are many prestigious old universities (Durham, Bristol, London and so on). However, 'red brick university' refers to the more recent, middlingly prestigious places like Leicester or Bath. Most of their buildings are in fact dull grey concrete and glass. We imagine a dutiful young man or woman clumsily paraphrasing their textbook in a hurry late into the night before their essay is due. Typical graduate Solid middle-ground achievers: doctors, solicitors, managers, programmers, marketing whizzes. Many a thirtysomething has been amused to see that they remember their new doctor from university days. He was always drunk and smoking too much. Similarly, their solicitor was a political anarchist, and their bank manager was always borrowing a fiver off friends. Former polytechnics Until the 1990s, polytechnics offered less academic, often more vocational or technical, degrees. A degree from a polytechnic was seen as inferior to that from a university. This was a divisive system, so the government renamed all the polytechnics as 'universities'. This had the convenient side-effect of doubling the number of university places at a stroke. Because there would already be a university in their towns, polytechnics adopted long, clumsy names - Bristol Poly became the 'University of the West of England', Liverpool Poly 'John Moores University' and so on. We imagine a resigned young man or woman who has no textbook and has to copy their friends' work the night before it is due, but luckily the tutor doesn't notice. Typical graduate Section managers in chemical companies; people in technical services who get fed up with their section managers and set up their own companies. Open University A home-study institution whose degrees are increasingly well regarded. We imagine a housewife or grandmother who missed university because of child-rearing duties. Now it isn't the babies who keep her awake at night but her Humanities essays, which she writes with unacademic passion. (Open University programmes, on BBC2 during the night, were famously boring and low-budget, consisting of an unfashionably dressed man at a blackboard. Now they are whizzy, colourful, and well-produced documentaries.) One thing is common to students the world over. They discover so many things: new friends, new music, new ideas, new activities, and new ways to run up an overdraft. But, alas, little about the subject they have come to study. Luckily, that's not the point.

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