Freshers Fritter Finances :: Wessex Scene Online

Freshers Fritter Finances

26th October 2004
Rebecca Twomey

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Long gone are the images of impoverished students struggleing to exist on their student grant and owning only a record player and a pair of flares. This year’s influx of freshers will be starting university with electronic equipment worth around Ł6,000 each. It is now the fashion for every room in a halls of residence to house a laptop, hi-fi stereo, television and dvd player accoring to a new survey.

The survey, sponsored by Marks and Spencer, estimates that this year’s freshers are expected to have possessions worth anything between Ł3,000 and Ł6,400. From such a figure it is no surprise that 71% of new students will bring a

television to university. The survey found that "the possessions of today’s students come in sharp comparison to those of an archetypal 1970s student."

Current students ensure that their technology is the latest - which translates as the most expensive. Their possessions have far greater worth than those of students who attended university just a generation ago. With the cost of going to university ever-increasing, the amount spent on this equipment will only add yet another black mark to the issue of student debt. This finding on student spending is in correlation with the growing levels of purchasing power amongst young people in general, contributed to by the easy-availability of credit which makes purchasing for students more accessible than ever before. However, the survey found that this expensive equipment is not purchased by students themselves - it is their willing and more affluent parents who foot the bill.

70% of students own a laptop and ,with the internet vast becoming a vital tool for research and study, this figure hardly comes as a surprise. In contrast to students of the past, tutors and students can now converse via email, and lecture notes are frequently posted on the internet, on site such as Blackboard. As of last year, Southampton University students now enrol for their course units online. With this in keeping, does it come as a shock that students own the same amount of consumer goods than the average family household?