This is a little odd. There are at least three top-level comments here wondering why anything should be different now from how it was "back in the day", as if t

This is a little odd. There are at least three top-level comments here wondering why anything should be different now from how it was "back in the day", as if that were what the article is about. But the article doesn't appear to suggest that anything has changed. In fact it says things were much the same when the author was at university in the 80s. It's a short, sympathetic comment piece that seems to be intended as a kindness to people who are about to start at university for the first time, surely that's all.