Coffee replaces beer as drink of choice for cash-strapped students

A university bar in Wales has been forced to close as students swap cider for cappucino as a cheaper option in an era of £9,000 a year tuition fees.

coffee v beer

A student bar at Aberystwyth University, where Prince Charles once spent a term, has shut due to a lack of patronage from students who have grown up in a Britain more preoccupied with “coffee culture”.

Student president Ben Meakin said: “More students are drinking coffee during the day while studying – and fewer are going out late into the night.”

The 15,000 students who attend the university were once well known for their love of drinking and a “party hard” mentality, but that has changed with the current undergraduate cohort – who will pay £9,000 in fees.

Mr Meakin added: “This is partly because of the rise in tuition fees and students having to face further financial hardship.

“So the university have chosen to improve the main union building to make it a more appealing living room on campus during the day time.”

Institutions including Birmingham, Exeter and City University in London all serve Starbucks or Costa branded coffee on campus.

Elsewhere in Wales, Glyndwr University shut its union bar and moved it last summer and Cardiff Met chose to open a new coffee bar franchise.

A National Union of Students has charted the rise in popularity of gourmet coffee among students in a report, which emphasised: “Students’ Unions will need to embrace the whole coffee experience.

“For those students who do not wish to spend significant levels of their income on alcoholic drinks coffee shops are a promising prospect.”

Entire forums on the popular Student Room website are dedicated to coffee loving students and to the purchase and care of their espresso machines.

The rise of “coffee culture” is imported from the US, where alcohol is illegal in many states for under-21s and a larger workload means students are not able to drink alcohol socially as often as their British counterparts.

First published in The Telegraph.

A good example of sloppy journalism.

Of what relevance Prince Charles once drank in a bar in Cardiff?

Students always have drank coffee, they drank it in their rooms, in their kitchens, invited mate round for a chat.

What is new, over the last decade, is binge drinking.

I would even question is drinking coffee cheaper than drinking beer. Whitbread bought, the rapidly expanded the Costa chain because more money is to be made from coffee than brewing beer.

What is disgusting is the way Starbucks and Costa are taking over university campuses. Are universities and students no longer capable of running their own coffee bars?

Tags: beer, coffee, No to Costa, students