University today

3. Worriers crippled with debt or binge-drinking hedonists — who exactly are the people attending university today? A new survey paints a fascinating picture.

In this year's survey, which involved in-depth interviews with 1,007 students, 70% said they had applied to university to get a good qualification. Four years ago, that figure was 53%. Some 57% of replies cited the need to improve their job chances, compared with 52% four years ago. Students are putting their noses to the grindstone. The survey finds that many are too focused on their work to worry about their love life. A third said they were actively choosing to avoid relationships. Seven out of 10 students said they cared very much about health and fitness. But the student body has not collectively gone on the wagon and grown halos. Students' average monthly booze bill is £73, according to the survey, compared with the £ 122 they spend on food. A third of them drink more than the 21 units recommended as a maximum weekly limit. "Despite a high level of awareness of the risks of binge drinking, significant proportions buy more alcohol than the recommended levels for safe drinking," the report says.

While more indebted than ever, students are spending more money on gadgets: 47% have a DVD player in their room, 49% have a mobile phone with picture-messaging and 16% have an MP3 player. Darren Wilson, 21, a third-year economics student at Leeds University, jokes that there are more DVD players in his house than people. Darren grew up next door to Niki in Newcastle. Now their lives are very different. By the time he gets up in the morning, she has finished her radio shift and is at her first lecture. "The likelihood of my making it to an early lecture is proportional to the hangover," he admits. Spoken like a true student, but Darren is not quite as nonchalant as he pretends to be. "I quite like the challenge of university. Not that I want to sound like a geek, but this last year and the end of the second year, it's been stretching." And Darren is far from lazy: four nights a week he takes part in sport and once a week he goes to a Spanish class. All on top of preparing for his finals. (The Guardian, by Polly Curtis, January 25, 2005)

Examinations for sale

4. Italy. A judge in Camerino sits watching a video that could be hard­core porn, except that the "stars" are an elderly professor and a young student. In Messina, another professor jumps to his death from the balcony of his flat. Pupils arriving at a school in Crema, near Milan, are greeted not by their teachers, but by police officers, who escort them to a classroom for questioning.

These bizarre events all point to a rottenness in Italy's education system. A rash of scandals has shown that qualifications, including degrees, are for sale. The two professors were accused of offering higher grades for sex. One chose suicide. The other fought, claiming that it was charm, not high marks, that had seduced his students. On June 7th, he was acquitted; but he must pay compensation of £120,000 ($150,000) to his university for damaging its reputation.

The school in Crema was among 34 private secondary schools caught up in an investigation into a vast trade in bogus exam passes. The going rate for a diploma di maturita, Italy's school-leaving certificate, was said by prosecutors to range from £2,000 to £8,000. Since a diploma is needed to apply to university or get a white-collar public-sector job, that seemed a bargain — the more so since the organization behind it, called Diploma No Problem, offered such good service. Answers were supplied for written and oral exams; attendance records were fixed. Conversations taped by the police suggest that the company even booked flights and hotels for "clients" so they could sit exams in places where the outcome was assured. One school south of Rome seems to have existed almost solely to produce study-free passes. It had 40 normal pupils, but around 1,000 external ones. The school was owned by a man with a criminal record, identified in court records as one of the bosses of Diploma No Problem. Police reckon the enterprise had an annual turnover of £5m. (The Economist, June 12, 2004)