The myth of the 'wild party' lifestyle of students is slowly being dispelled as those who choose to further their education encounter the tough challenge of covering the basic costs of living when there is no money coming in, writes Una McCaffery.

Being a student is great. You have the endless mornings in bed, the bottomless cups of coffee every afternoon and the long, fun-filled nights spent in whichever local hostelry is offering "two for a pound" that week.

And it can last for a whole four years if you select the right course on your CAO form: not a bad merriment ration in anybody's lifetime.

If, after all that, you still haven't sucked enough pleasure out of your student career, there is always the postgraduate option. Sign up for a PhD and you will get another few years out of the old student card. Why would anyone refuse?

The answer is simple: lack of funds. The above lifestyle, a romanticised fiction that has long been out of financial reach of the average Irish student, costs a lot of money.

A survey conducted on behalf of the Union of Students in Ireland (USI) last year found that the average undergraduate student in Dublin faces an expenditure of €670.13 every month, while their contemporary outside Dublin needs €597.83 every month to finance the same basic lifestyle.

With the maximum maintenance grant currently standing at €265 per month, students face a stark and simple shortfall between money coming in and money going out.

Alternative sources of income must be sought. The USI's stance on this issue is one familiar to anybody who has ever been a student - an increased maintenance grant is, for the union, the only option.

Back in the real world, the students on the ground have no option but to get on with their lives with the money available to them. The lifestyle outlined in the table below does not appear to be excessively hedonistic (aside perhaps from more money being spent on contraception than laundry), yet it obviously adds up.

Ms Deirdre Sword, a social studies student and president of the Students' Union at Athlone Institute of Technology (AIT), says that she would probably have been forced to drop out of college if it had not been for some assistance from her college's hardship fund, money set aside to aid students in dire financial straits.

"The inadequacy of the grant is the main problem. It hasn't risen with the cost of living."

Ms Sword says that her financial means were significant in the choice to study in Athlone rather than in a bigger college or town.

"I was considering Dublin and Limerick but I knew that I couldn't afford them," she says. "Finances were definitely a factor. You have to consider everything. Any good career guidance should mention the cost of living when people are applying for college."

Even in Athlone, where average digs cost about €70 per week, compared to €127 in Dublin, Ms Sword says that some students are consumed by worry about how they will pay their next rent instalment.

"Some are barely scraping by. They're trying to survive on a part-time job."

This situation is repeated around the State. Figures compiled by the Tipperary Institute of Technology, for example, show that 55 per cent of attending students have part-time jobs. A similar study among DIT students found the comparable figure there was 75 per cent.

It is hard to believe that the academic life of some students does not suffer in the rush for overtime or bonuses.

The alternative to mixing study with work is to mix study with credit instead, a model followed in Britain, where students can borrow about £2,000 sterling (€3,279.85) at low interest rates (currently 2.3 per cent) for each year of their degree. Depending on how many loans they take, this money is repayable between 60 and 84 months, with the repayment period starting the April after graduation.

The system works efficiently and represents a financial life-saver for many students. The downside is that student debt levels are ballooning.

A recent survey among 1,000 British students found that at the start of the current academic year, the average student owed £4,203, an increase of £877 on the previous year.

While this included money borrowed for the payment of tuition fees, an outlay not faced by most Irish students, the parallels still exist - easy money equals easy debt. Two-fifths of British students questioned said they were seriously worried about their debt levels.

No such dedicated loan system operates in the Republic, leaving students facing the same credit options as the rest of us; among them, a chat with the local, friendly bank manager. Research from Bank of Ireland, which has eight on-campus branches in the Republic, has found that 18 per cent of students borrow at some stage of their academic career.

The research also found that 12 per cent of students have a credit card, a figure that translates into good news for Bank of Ireland,which last year introduced a student credit card, amid a flurry of disapproval.

The bank's marketing manager for customer recruitment, Mr Pat Farrell, says many students borrow for short periods, such as the weeks before their grant arrives, or the summer holidays. The applicable APR is currently 9.3 per cent, 1.5 per cent below the bank's normal variable rate.

"We're quite prudent in the way we lend," he says. "It's not in our interests to get them into debt. We look at their repayment capacity very closely. If the repayment capacity isn't enough to get a loan, we move into their track record and the bank's relationship with their family."

Mr Farrell says the bank will not "help anyone in a hardship case if it's going to shove them further into debt".

In this light, overdrafts are not the bank's favourite student credit device - when they do arise, "very small limits such as £40 or £50" apply, says Mr Farrell. "The majority of our lending is lending rather than overdrafts."

Of course the luckiest Irish students are those whose parents or other relatives are sufficiently prosperous to fund their offspring's education.

This is a theme that has, within the past year, taken on a novel twist on the other side of the Atlantic. Two recent graduates in the US have established a company called MyRichUncle, which allows students to sell themselves as investment products. The idea is that an investor (a "rich uncle") funds a student's education on the basis that, upon graduation, that student will pay the investor a fixed percentage of their income over a fixed period of time.

The student gets a "free" education and the investor, provided they choose a student destined for career success, can make a killing on future earnings. Ethical considerations aside, the boys deserve points for creativity.

Interested parties, both inside the Department of Education and outside on the campuses, can check it out for themselves on www.myrichuncle.com.