What it means to be a student has changed as dramatically as higher education itself. It has always meant more than the formal academic role, and this book is concerned with the changes in students' lives, activities and attitudes since the period of student activism in the 1960s and 1970s. The authors have visited universities and colleges, interviewed students and staff, and looked at the records of institutions and students unions. They go beyond past research concerns with learning, attainment and statistics to discuss residence, students unions, clubs and societies, the lives of different constituencies of students, representation, leisure, hardship, part-time employment. They consider the impacts of changes in size, funding, diversity, the idea of community, and the definitions of students as apprentices, customers, consumers, participants. They compare experience in the UK with that in the USA. This is the first book to attempt such a wide-ranging picture of students' lives into the 1990s.