II. Read the text and compare the life of a student of your faculty with that of British students.

Recognize yourself here?

Ok, surveys are never quite what they claim to be but, says Peter Brown, their view of student life just may be illuminating.

When I was a student I was paid to take part in a survey. We had to click a hand-held machine every time a pedestrian entered a shopping centre. After some hours I felt thirsty, and was not surprised to meet a number of other students with clickers in the pub. Together we clicked randomly for a few beers before returning to our posts.

Disgraceful behaviour? Sure, but please forgive me if I treat student surveys with suspicion – and not only those questionnaires in which they “reveal” how often they drink, smoke, make love, pay the rent or look at a book, but also official surveys conducted by higher education bodies. Ask yourself: who supplies the facts that their computers set about scrambling.

Suspect though they are, however, such surveys are our only means of separating fact from complete fiction. What follows is therefore no more than a thumbnail sketch of you, the British student.

For a start, there are an awful lot of you – one in three young people goes to university or a college, and the over all number wanting to study is still rising. The National Union of Students (NUS) claims to represent almost two million students in further and higher education. A levels and AS levels are becoming slightly less important as an entry qualification. Scottish highers are doing better, as is the International Baccalaureate. There are more places to study at, if you believe the surveys. In 1980 there were 80 higher education institutions; in 1998, 254. Indisputably, thanks to John Major, there are far more universities than there were: 97.

Last year 389, 000 of you applied for full-time or “sandwich” higher education courses, although only 298, 000 were accepted. And almost half of you chose a local college or university. Four times as many people apply to full-time courses as they did in 1968. And ₤ 776 million is going into providing 100, 000 more places.

Until recently you’ve been getting older-one in five of you is over 35-but this autumn there has been a fall of 183 % in the number of over-25s seeking a place. The introduction of tuition fees has been blamed, although there is no firm evidence for that yet. Good news for under-21 boys: there are 48 of you to every 52 girls. Of last year’s university applicants, 234, 000 were white, 9, 000 black and 26, 000 Asian.

You’re a middle-class bunch - so middle-class that the Government in tends to pay universities more if they take students from poorer areas, or “low-participation neighbourhoods”. The number of applicants from social classes 4 and 5 is still extremely low. But 82 % of young undergraduates went to state schools; Oxbridge is half-state, half-private, more or less. On the whole you’re an apathetic lot, but you can occasionally be roused (probably by an NUS wake-up call). Some 40, 000 of you took to the streets two years ago to campaign against tuition fees.

What are you all studying? Well, fewer people are doing teacher training sociology and English. More are studying sports science, design studies and marketing. But the range of what is available to be studied continues to expand. Management is the word that appears most often in the title of courses and there are still more sociology courses on offer than media studies. Degree subjects available include aromatherapy, cyberspace, football and floor-covering.

How hard do you work? Not very. If, for example, you study human sciences at Oxford there’s less than three hours’ work a day. Fine art, surprisingly, is the hardest option, at 43 hours a week. Law students at Oxford put in an average 36 hours, followed by chemists at 33 hours.

So what happens? On average, 18 % of you drop out - about 50, 000 after the first year. At some universities it is 40 %. And it tends to be students from poorer backgrounds who drop out.

University counselors see more than 40, 000 students a year about problems ranging from depression to suicidal behavior. Modular degrees - which send students scurrying all over the campus instead of learning with a stable group of friends – and the break-down of family life (nowhere to go in the holidays) are blamed.

If you survive, what kind of degree will you get? In 1995, 237, 798 first degrees were awarded, of which 16, 687 were firsts, 95, 824 seconds (1), 82, 898 were seconds (2), 13, 770 were thirds and 27, 874 were passes.

Meanwhile, you are doing other jobs, often working long hours, in unsafe conditions, just to keep body and soul together. Two fifths of students in higher education do part-time work. One in three students misses lectures to work. Well, not surprising, really when you look at the cost of accommodation. A student in the private rented sector in London pays an average of ₤ 87 per week for housing. Over the year this leaves you a shortfall of ₤ 3, 354 to find – having spent your loan and grant. In London you spend more than 60 % of your weekly income on rent, and very little less elsewhere. Your housing is often substandard and sometimes dangerous.

Even in self-catering rooms in hall the rents range from ₤ 76 a week at the London School of Economics to ₤ 33, 67 at St. Andrews.

Should people feel sorry for you? Well… the average student’ spends ₤ 20, 32 a week on drink, ₤ 17, 90 on entertainment, ₤ 11, 66 on clothes and ₤ 7, 43 on personal convenience goods, including CDs and mobile phones.

Nearly a third of all students have sex at least once a week. If you are at Manchester or Cambridge there’s a 10 % change that you make love most days and at Dundee, the women were said in one survey to be the sexiest in the land, as indeed were the men.

You go on holiday a lot. An estimated 1, 5 million students will travel abroad this summer. Australia, Thailand and India being the popular destinations.

Students of physics are most likely to experiment with drugs other than cannabis, which is the most popular drug. Future doctors, dentists and vets are heavily into LSD. Biological science students – mainly those studying agriculture - drink to excess and 23 % of them exceed the hazardous level. Some bar-flies miss lectures three times a month because of binge drinking.

Wherever you study, when you’ve got your degree you’ll almost certainly have a job within five years. Only 2 % don’t. But the real high earners are middle-class men with good. A levels from a professional background.

And the employers’ favourite university? Cambridge.

b) Find in the text words that mean the following:

1. informative and enlightening, often by revealing or emphasizing facts that were previously obscure

2. a statistical analysis of answers to a poll of a sample of a population, for example, to determine opinions, preferences, or knowledge

3. (of something written) quite short

4. a group of people, especially friends or associates (informal)

5. not taking any interest in anything, or not bothering to do anything

6. a particular group of people (informal)

7. a frightening experience that is interpreted as a sign that a major change is needed in the way somebody lives or conducts business

8. to abandon a project or activity without finishing it

9. to move around in an agitated manner or with a swirling motion

10. an amount by which something falls short of what is required

11. U.K. used to describe accommodations, especially for vacationers or students, in which meals are not provided but cooking facilities are

12. somebody who spends large amounts of time in bars (slang)