By Jenny Speak, a newspaper journalism student at the University of Central Lancashire, who spent a fortnight on work placement at the Keighley News

Many students will have just returned to university after the Christmas holidays. For some, like myself, this may be the final semester -- the last stretch before they swap the lecture theatre for the office.

Nowadays degrees are coming at a price for graduates -- namely a minimum £10,000 debt.

But if you look at the money students have actually lost out on, it could be argued that university actually sets people back nearer £45,000 -- the debt that's incurred from going to university, say for example £11,000, and then the three years' wages that could have been earned if employment had been found after leaving school at 18.

The worrying thing is that student debt looks set to rise even more with the introduction of top-up fees and paying more back after graduation.

According to the Government's Department of Education and Skills, the benefits of higher education are that graduates can expect to earn 64 per cent more than non-graduates, and during their lifetime earn £400,000 more than the national average. Apparently career prospects are improved and graduates are more likely to be taken on for a job than someone without a degree. Who do they think actually believes this?

Politicians naively believe, or try to make us believe, that with that all-important piece of paper in our hand, the world is ours.

But things are not as simple as that -- one graduate alone is in competition for a job with numerous other people holding the same degree, different degrees, and for some occupations, applicants without a degree.

It's said that university is still very much a middle class privilege and statistics, unfortunately, support this view -- 75 per cent of children from middle-class families go to university, compared to a mere 13 per cent of families from unskilled family backgrounds.

But I don't think university is a walk in the park for any student, unless of course they come from extremely rich families.

To use myself as an example, I receive 75 per cent of the total loan available and must pay the maximum amount of tuition fees (£1,100). My parents help me out and pay my fees to my university in three instalments across the academic year. I must therefore pay my rent out of my student loan. At the start of last term, by the time I paid my first rent cheque to my landlord I was left with just under £200 of my student loan.

Now I'm no shopaholic or complete party animal, but any student will tell you that just under £200 at the start of term, when you have to buy household items for you, new place of accommodation, text books and food, does not last very long.

Many students need to get part-time jobs to help them get by. A survey showed that 40 per cent of students work during term time -- of these two thirds said that their employment affected their studies, such as not attending lectures and failing to hand work in.

It's therefore no wonder that overdrafts and credit cards become a major source of keeping students financially afloat.

The Government has a target of getting 50 per cent of under 30-year-olds into higher education by the year 2010, but this will not happen if something isn't done to make life a little bit easier for students. And let's face it, this is not going to happen. Top up fees and paying more back after leaving university are only going to make the whole system messier and far more expensive.

For three years of higher education most graduates are going to be paying back loan instalments long after the fond memories of university have faded and been replaced by thoughts of mortgages, home insurance and nursery bills.