NORTHERN PLANNER

If you’re my age and you live in the UK, you’ve probably laughed at Paul Calf and his disdain of ‘lazy students’. But the picture of layabout undergraduates isn’t really true anymore, at least according to the The Royal Bank of Sctotland’s ‘student index report’ . Over half of undergraduates will work part time next term , that’s up 40% on last year. At first I thought "Good, about time too" in a typically grumpy fashion(conveniently forgetting the Autumn term of 1994 when I manaaged to miss every lecture on South African Government). But then I read on to see that people who work in term time are a third less likely to get a first or upper second class grade. Not good since University is supposed to be about learning stuff.

So what do you think? You could say that it’s not fair on kids from poorer backgrounds who need to work to pay their tuition fees. You could also say that they still seem to have plenty of spare time to drink in the pub. I’m not qualified to comment since I managed to coast to an upper second doing bugger all (I did work at a nightclub though and working with bouncers helped me prepare for briefing  certain creatives as a lowly account exec).