`How yo-yos help me manage on a shoestring'

CAROLINE SHEPPARD, a marketing and law student, said a six-week spell marketing yo-yos was essential to help pay for her final year at university.

Miss Sheppard, a final-year student at De Montfort University, Leicester, has been working 12 to 20 hours a week to earn pounds 600 to supplement her pounds 900 grant and pounds 1,200 student loan.

She got the job through a new employment agency on campus after returning with a large overdraft after a year travelling.

"My grant does not even cover my rent. With my student loans as well, I'm still left with a minus. Because I'm in my final year my social life is not huge, but the books alone cost pounds 170. I'm working as well as studying full-time and [it] really is full-time. In a perfect world I would rather have the time to study, but the job does look good on my CV. It's quite a common thing for people to work but the course work is heavy as well.

"Unless your parents will support you at university you will have to work."