A survey conducted by the Times Educational Supplement reveals that the current generation of university students are more demanding, and require much more ‘spoon feeding’ than their predecessors.



In a survey of 400 lecturers – all aged under 40 – four out of five maintain that the modern student expects a greater degree of support, and help with their courses than when they were undergraduates. The emergence of the internet is viewed as the culprit in that it makes students less active in finding out information for themselves.



Head of public affairs at the Association of University Teachers, Jonathan Whitehead, believes the introduction of tuition fees has distorted the student / teacher relationship:



“It’s something we’ve been seeing for a long time. As students are treated more as customers they are going to be more demanding, and often rightly so.”



In spite of these revelations, the survey also found that 85 per cent of academics were committed to stay working within universities, while only 30 per cent would advise their children against going into the same profession.