THREE youths are sitting on a bench near the fountains at Worcester's Quayhead.

One drains the last dregs from his drink container - and something seems to tell me what will happen next.

Of course. He lifts the empty can above his head, and, in a bowling motion, sends it hurtling into the Severn. The can plops into the water, narrowly missing a swan.

One more act of mindless vandalism to add to the thousands that are committed every day. No different from any other.

Except that there is a difference this time. For the spotty yob is about to be challenged. By me.

So I walk up to this unholy trinity and ask the youth for an explanation. No waste bin, he says. Pathetic.

What, I think to myself, no mouthful of profanities?

Either I'm lucky or I just might look a tad too tasty to mess with. No, I mustn't kid myself. But in truth, yes, I am pushing my luck a bit. There are three of them, even if they look like Third Division yobs to me.

But I'm committed now. None of them looks like starting anything. One has to make the calculation, you see. I repeat my question, demanding a better excuse. The one on the left starts to get lippy. Shut up. I repeat the question once again, warming to the theme and prepared for whatever might happen.

Cue short lecture through gritted teeth about the environment . . . and the confrontation is over as quickly as it began. I walk on, expecting either the sound of running footsteps or torrent of verbal abuse.

But there's nothing. As I said, Third Division yobs. Standard student issue.

From the fountains to the Cathedral Gardens, the riverbank is now thronged most lunch times with gruesome examples of Worcester's burgeoning "student" population.

But the only subject that most of them appear to be studying is a Higher National Certificate In Anti-Social Studies.

Well, I don't know how the written work's going, but the practical certainly seems to coming along nicely.

Almost overnight, the Faithful City has been turned into a student town. And there's more campus development on the way. Government quango Advantage West Midlands - a monolith funded by the taxpayer - is forging ahead with plans to transform the former Castle Street Hospital site into a thriving university campus.

The Worcester Establishment talks loftily about this growth. City MP Mike Foster, referring to this scheme, is reported as talking about Government money "to stimulate the local economy by developing hi-tech industries between the University of Birmingham and QinetiQ based in Malvern, with Worcester being right at the heart of such plans".

Fine words. But tell that to the residents of Hylton Road who will then be firmly caught in the "Blue Murder" Triangle - the Tech in Deansway, Castle Street, and bedsit land in St John's.

You see Mike, the reality is very different from the Utopia of your fantasies. For Hylton Road is now a battleground several nights a week, the trouble being caused by youths who should never be at college or university in the first place.

Birmingham-Worcestershire information corridor? Oh yes, Mike. I imagine the residents of Hylton Road talk of little else when they are deprived of sleep every single, miserable Saturday night of term time.

If Worcester is truly to become a student town, then the nightmare endured by residents in certain areas of St John's must be addressed. It is of no use whatsoever for the great and the good to habitually turn a blind eye and hope the headlines will fade.

They won't. And I will make sure of it.

It is also no good for the lecturers at UCW to dodge their responsibilities. Most of their charges are no more than pubescent children. And children need guidance.

Lecturers must stop being right-on for once and accept some unpalatable truths.

Things have changed since their day. Once it was a case of students revolting. Now it's just plain revolting students.

However, the generation we are talking about has been largely disadvantaged. These are the kids whose parents wore flares, Concorde-lapelled jackets and listened to Abba and the Bay City Rollers.

In schools, the occasional brutalities and pedagoguery endured by the baby-boomers had, by the 1980s and '90s, been replaced with the opposite extreme - the universally-held wisdom of laissez-faire.

Most methods of effective punishment were abolished. Criticism of any kind was frowned on, the idea being that any form of correction might upset the little darlings.

The result of this social engineering is now on the streets. Is it any wonder that young people who have never encountered barriers or restraint of any kind simply do not know how to behave?

Walking along the riverbank, it soon becomes evident how badly these students are lacking in social skills. Most days they are spitting, belching, effing and blinding . . . drinking alcohol (illegal under a Worcester bylaw, as it happens) and kicking the cans into the river.

The appalling behaviour is not toned down for anyone. There is no respect for anything or anybody.

I left school at 16 and that was the best thing that could have happened. I was put to the plough straight away - it was really hard work on a weekly paper in those days.

Most nights would find me working - either evening jobs or learning shorthand and touch-typing at the local tech. I was never full-time college or university material.

An apprenticeship was perfect for youths such as myself. Tragically, the present Government is hooked on the idea of all young people going to college or university.

But it's a mistake - many are not cut out academically or temperamentally for such a path.

The best course for them would be to start work, like I did, at 16. Even today, proper work knocks the rough edges off youngsters.

It is precisely because most lecturers have never spent any part of their lives outside in the real world of work - the jungle in which the rest of us must survive - that they fail these youngsters and, by definition, the rest of society.

Worcester may indeed become a city of campuses. But such an ideal will have no credibility until the harassed residents of St John's are given some relief from the wretched reality of living among young people who are away from home for the first time and don't give a damn for anyone.

I told my wife about the incident on the riverbank. She said I was an idiot for taking risks. A man of your age should know how to be more careful. But I was unrepentant . . . glad I had fought back, in a small way, against the loutishness that leaves its boot-print on everyday life.

Yes, fighting back. Like the good people of Hylton Road. Are you with them too, former-lecturer-turned-MP Mr Michael Foster?