ABSTRACT
Academics are anxious to have graduate students under their supervision, partly because they find teaching at the frontiers of knowledge intellectually more satisfying, but also because they know that their careers are more dependent on their reputations as researchers than on their teaching. Within the rapidly expanding field of research into higher education, the problems of graduate students have remained a relatively neglected area. Graduate students can be expected to react differently to the current unrest in universities according to where they fit into this typology. The British students most afflicted by loneliness, at least at the beginning of their research, are those who change universities, but many of those who stay on find that most of their friends have left. Libraries are for most students of the humanities or the social sciences what both equipment and laboratories are for science students — both tools of research and place of work.
