“Not everybody is academic and not all of us get into university, like, but don’t worry if you don’t.” That was Kate Nash, declaring the virtues of the University of Life while collecting her gong at the recent Brit awards. But it wasn’t long after the words streamed out of the 20-year-old “Best Female Artist’s” mouth that the defenders of higher education sprung into action.

In response, the Russell Group’s director general Dr Wendy Piatt urged youngsters to “at least seriously consider how going to university will boost their earning potential, raise their self-esteem and confidence, provide both an enjoyable and intellectually stimulating experience - and even improve their health."

This all stood in stark contrast to what seems like a steady stream of sensational statistical surveys, appearing across the UK’s student press. Far from being well-balanced and healthy citizens, student hacks have had their own sobering news to report – that students are more likely to be image-obsessed, promiscuous, binge-drinking and anti-social.

First, it was sex. We are thinking about it all the time, if the last few weeks’ student papers are anything to go by. The nation’s student journalists have been all over the subject like a dirty media rash. The principal conclusion blaring out from headlines, and emanating from a survey by Cambridge University’s Varsity newspaper, was that sex plus study equals a toxic combination for your degree results. Varsity’s most compelling revelation was that the higher a Cambridge college came in the survey’s table of promiscuity, the lower it came in the university’s table of colleges’ academic achievement.

Meanwhile, Manchester’s Student Direct unveiled their survey on students’ drug habits under the headline “Drugged Up Students Regret Drunken Sex”. It found that 69 per cent of Manchester’s students admit to having taken illegal drugs, with 52 per cent of that figure having taken ecstasy and over a third having tried magic mushrooms.

The article then went on to cover drinking habits and the scenes that ensue, reporting that “as a result of the binge drinking culture, drunken fights and arguments are rife amongst Manchester students, with many admitting to being violent or drunk and disorderly.”

However, only 9 per cent of respondents were aware of the recommended alcohol limits for men and women. Student Direct went on to report: “Shockingly, one of the few students who knew the recommended weekly allowance for alcohol noted having her stomach pumped as a result of binge drinking.”

Bristol University’s Epigram had some even more disturbing findings to report. Far from boosting “self-esteem and confidence” as the Russell Group would have us believe, university is turning us into even more insecure, self-doubting and self-conscious adolescents than we were when – as fumbling freshers – we were first thrust into our hallowed institutions.

A total of 915 students completed Epigram’s Body Image Survey, revealing that almost a third of girls have at some point made themselves sick after eating, and just over five per cent of those surveyed regularly throw up after meals.

Intriguingly, the same percentage of both boys and girls – 41 per cent – said they feel worse about their bodies since coming to university.

Not solely the bearer of depressing news, Epigram had some cheerful optimism to bring to student hacks across the country. In its 200th issue,it has proof that from tiny journalistic acorns, mighty oaks can indeed grow – in the form of both the towering publication that now is Epigram, along with two of its now notable alumni. In 1989, James Landale was just a floundering student journalist, enlisting the help of, among others a certain Will Lewis, to create a four-page tabloid ready for freshers’ week. Suffice to say that nearly 20 years later, Epigram is still going strong, while Landale is now BBC News 24’s Chief Political Correspondent and Lewis is the (youngest ever) editor of The Daily Telegraph – fuel for any student’s journalistic dreams.

While it’s been a bad week for you sex-obsessed, drug-taking, body image-conscious students out there, the news isn’t going to get any better if you add middle-class to the list .Max Gogarty, 19, must have been thrilled when he received his own blog on The Guardian’s website, on which to chronicle his two-month backpacking voyage across India and Thailand. However, it was only 24 hours after the first post was up on the website that a torrent of abuse befell the teenage blogger. Internet surfers had noticed that Max had the same surname as Paul Gogarty, an occasional travel writer for the same newspaper. “Readers presumed he was a privileged public school boy whose father had secured him the blog spot and whose gap-year travels were being funded by the newspaper.”

Alas, the backlash began in earnest. Gogarty had become the victim of the recent phenomenon of ‘going viral’. Cyber hate-mail appeared across the internet; on his blog, as well as other well known sites including Facebook and gossip-site Holy Moly.

Gogarty Snr. responded to what he called “a tsunami of hate”, accusing the cyber-bullies of class hatred and envy: “It's the conformity of the comments, the cruelty, the smug self-righteousness and envy. It's all so bitter and full of bile. The exposure is terrifying.”

Max was even listed on Wikipedia under the section on 'nepotism', in the company of the likes of North Korea’s Kim Jong-il. He no longer appears alongside the world’s dictators, but there are remnants of the furore on the page’s discussion section, where one user makes his views clear.

“So we have Bashar al-Assad, Kim Jong-il, Qusay Hussein and Max Gogarty as examples of nepotism. What is Max Gogarty doing there? A minor storm in a teacup because his father writes for the Guardian too, and this equates him with the sons of dictators, tyrants and mass murderers. A little perspective, anyone?”

Mr Gogarty made clear that there was no nepotism involved and that he had hardly ever written for The Guardian: “[Max] is not an attention seeker. He is just bright and 19 and middle-class – and that's a crime in Britain.”

And finally, just in case you haven’t already noticed, the world of student media has got slightly duller of late. The Tart, formerly Britain’s only national satirical student newspaper, has dropped its short-lived student focus, in favour of distributing to London commuters.

The newspaper’s editor-in-chief, Tobes Kelly, told Times Online Student in November of his mission to use satire to encourage, educate and inform students, who he described as “culturally aware” and “bright”. Onwards and upwards though, as The Tart says that the decision was made “to move out of the student market” and concentrate on a demographic that was more “informed, culturally aware and active than the student campus.” We won’t take it personally.

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