There was a time when school leavers would have been delighted with an £11,000-a-year starting salary, writes Jess Goodman.
Now, as figures today show, this year's A-level students can expect to shell out around that amount every year of their university education, meaning an average three-year course will cost them more than £33,000, an increase of £5,000 on last year's figures.
Rising tuition fees, combined with accommodation costs, other living expenses and a social budget, will leave students facing debts of nearly £15,000 on graduation.
Compare this with the considerably lower cost of a university education in mainland Europe, where in addition students often live at home, and the lot of the undergraduate in Britain seems a poor one.
Most of the students in the Natwest survey that came up with the £33,000 cost of a degree said the rising threat of debt would force them to cut back even further on spending; more of them would also resort to part-time work, the effect of which on study remains hotly debated.
However, more significant than this evidence of students' level-headedness is that the rising cost of a degree could be storing up problems for the country as a whole.
From the minute people in Britain turn 18, they are bombarded with offers of credit - tantalised with interest-free loans and ever-expandable overdrafts. As a consequence, graduates start their careers with the message that debt is virtually necessary.
That is all very well if you view your loan simply as a kind of graduate tax and studiously avoid any other kind of debt while at university.
But many students view extra debts, accrued through credit cards and overdrafts, as amorphous additions to a distant, almost mythical total, despite the harsher conditions that apply to commercial borrowing.
Students know, at the back of their minds, their debts will catch up with them eventually. But cocooned in that safe little bubble of higher education, everything looks a little different, and once you have started borrowing, it is easy to keep doing so.
Today's generation of students may be the financial victims of tomorrow.
