COLLEGE technician Clare Haddock works 70 hours week. But she is only paid for half of them.

Clare is one of an increasing number of students who must put in a full working week so that they can afford to study for a degree.

And, according to new research, half of East Lancashire's students are suffering from stress as they put in long hours in pubs and shops to fend off growing debt.

Mix the paid work with the academic demands of a degree or HND course and you have a disturbing new cocktail of high anxiety.

Now, many are on the march for a better deal. Last week local students joined a protest march organised by the National Union of Students which brought central London to a standstill.

They were calling for the restoration of grants, scrapped five years ago.

Clare, of Moss Bank, Darwen, is luckier than most. The BA Fine Arts student works 35 hours a week as a technician at Blackburn College - where she also studies.

"The college is very good at supporting me, but when my work clashes with the course during the day I have to make up the time in the evening," she said. "It gets very tiring - it's a struggle."

Another degree course student at the college, Terence Lee, 22, of Manchester Road, Burnley, revealed he has two jobs to keep himself afloat. "I work in a pub and I'm a supervisor in a supermarket. It's tiring," he said.

He works Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays so that he can concentrate on his studies during the rest of the week. "I do 22 hours in the supermarket and 10 in the pub. I just don't have a social life," he said.

Daniel Ashley, for the National Union of Students, said: "It's a sad indictment of the modern higher education experience that half of students say they now suffer from stress.

"And it's no coincidence that those students who have to work long hours in paid work are those who suffer most. Mounting evidence shows the devastating impact that scrapping grants has had."

The average student now graduates with a debt of £10,000. And applications from students from working-class backgrounds are down 10 per cent in five years, he revealed.

Estelle Morris, Secretary of State for Education and Skills, launched a review last summer which is looking at cash support for students, particularly those from poorer backgrounds.