We warmly invite all readers to contribute constructively to the section by sending in their letters, ideas and reports so as to improve its content and extend its readership. This resurgence in the protest movement against the fees and teh abolition of the maintenance grant is an indication that students wish to protect and build their future, and secure their collective rights. However, today's students are in many ways different from their counterparts of thirty years ago. Firstly, the composition of the student body has changed.
Students come from various ethnic and class backgrounds, and the ratio of the sexes is different.
There are also more mature students nowadays. Students have different career aims, their expectations have changed and, in some departments, competition for the top grades has intensified. Secondly, the conditions in which students live are different. Along with the general social developments of the last thirty years, the decrease in welfare funding means that many students are taking on part-time work in order to survive. Thirdly, the attitudes of successive governments have increasingly tended towards active criminalisation of the youth.