As university students face fees of up to £9,000 a year for their degree courses, baby boomers like me are having to come to terms with the fact that this country’s free-for-all is gradually coming to an end.

The austerity years are kicking in with a vengeance and for parents of my generation, which benefited from free further education as well as free healthcare, it’s something of a shock to realise that our children will be saddled with thousands of pounds of debt when they have completed their degree courses.

From this autumn, student loans are set to rise.

As a result of Government funding reductions to course providers, universities will begin charging full-time students fees of between £6,000 and £9,000 a year.

Students unlucky enough to have chosen a course costing £9,000 a year, will face a minimum debt of £27,000 in three or four years’ time.

Of course, some students will have taken jobs to pay off some of their fees as they studied and a few fortunate ones will be able to pay some or all of their fees through the Bank of Mum and Dad.

But most will have to pay their loans off themselves when they enter the job market, as graduates have just been reminded in the past week by the arrival of their annual statement for their student loans.

Although repayments are only due when they have secured a job paying a minimum of £21,000 a year, the debt is likely to hang over them for years to come.

The effects are being felt in universities across the country, including Sussex where dozens of places are left untaken through clearing at both Brighton University and the University of Sussex .

It seems many teenagers have been weighing up the benefits of a degree against the cost of a double dip recession, an uncertain job market and debt, and found further education lacking.

It’s no wonder.

Research shows that while this year the total number of graduate vacancies was expected to increase, a third of them will be filled by graduates who have already worked for their organisations through industrial placements, holiday work or sponsorships, thus closing off these jobs to other graduates.

So while the figures look encouraging – graduate intake this year is expected to increase by 6.4% and despite the widespread recruitment freeze at Government departments and agencies even public sector employers plan to expand their graduate intake by 21.9% this year – many jobs have already been ring- fenced for a chosen few.

Perhaps those teenagers contemplating their future have come to the right conclusion, given that debt has been a key factor in the current economic recession, that graduates are finding it harder and harder to find those decent jobs with good career prospects in a recession and that a degree in Media Studies when the media world has imploded is not such a bright idea.

There has been plenty of discussion about how universities, especially the most prestigious, select their students, but I reckon that as the Government squeeze on further education funding continues, that argument will become defunct as universities scrabble to attract students – any students – on to their courses.

As a result, I hope that, like A- levellers thinking long and hard about economic realities, universities are forced to rethink some of the more useless subjects, such as Celebrity Journalism (I kid you not – it really is a subject at Staffordshire University) or International Football Business Management, and ditch them.

Really, why should the taxpayer foot the bill for subjects without true value such as these when the country is cutting down on essentials and desperately needs people with real skills?

When you think about countries such as the USA, where university fees are far higher, leaving some graduates from the more prestigious universities with debts of £75,000 and more, students here still have it far easier.

In fact, most other countries charge students further education fees and Britain is simply joining their ranks, albeit a bit late in the day.

The baby boom generation is still accustomed to the days of the 1970s when even as Britain faced economic recession and strikes, blackouts and piles of rubbish littering the streets, the students paid for by the Government were out protesting against that very same Government.

That luxury isn’t available for today’s students, who are unable to protest too much because they’re too busy holding down jobs to help cover their living costs and paying towards their loans.

But making students pay for their degrees is the right course to take.

During their working life, they will earn far more than those without degrees – starting salaries in some of the UK’s leading employers are on average around £29,000 while a fifth of new recruits can earn £35,000 and at investment banks up to £45,000 a year.

It cannot be right to expect the taxpayer, many of whom don’t have a degree and hold down lower paid jobs, to pay for their education and receive zilch in return.

Highly educated people bring prosperity to a country so why shouldn’t they foot the bill?

Austerity is a hard but necessary lesson for the Me generation, which took free further education, free healthcare and free benefits for granted.

The children of that generation are now having to pay for all that Me time.

Students saddled with debt, hospitals forced to account for every penny and benefits that come with strings attached are the result of this country having it too good for too long.

But with an increasing population putting pressure on every service available, Britain simply can’t afford it any longer.