Are students only here for the beer?

Judging by the innumerable posters and leaflets and social media advertising campaigns, you could be forgiven for thinking that life at one of Canterbury’s universities is about one thing: having fun. New students tempted by cheap drinks, late nights and romantic liaisons go out in huge groups to venues that can all too easily find themselves struggling to accommodate their number.

Only this week, we saw police averting a major disturbance outside Steinbeck and Shaw in St George’s Place, when revellers queueing for more than an hour tried to force their way in.

There is a risk, however, that this massive emphasis on fun only serves to obscure the reason for students’ time at university – that they are there to study first and play second.

Already, critics of mass higher education complain that three or four years’ of extra study is simply a way of delaying entry into adult life, an extension of adolescence that serves no useful purpose.

Now noises are being made about the whole concept of freshers’ weeks. Sir Anthony Seldon, vice-chancellor of the University of Buckingham, has called for universities to curb the excesses of freshers’ weeks and end their “permissive” culture of drinking and drug-taking.

Given that it is not the universities that suffer from what Sir Anthony speaks, but the cities in which they are based, there will be many here who would welcome far greater restraint at the start of the academic year.

Sir Anthony wants to see students learn relaxation and selfawareness techniques. But perhaps all that needs doing is ramming home the message that at university – like school – education is paramount.