Students are a horrible, reckless and rebellious bunch of layabouts with sizeable grudges against society. That's the bigoted and outdated view of a small group of politicians and pundits.

In the late-1990s landlords took a pretty dim view of students too. In their view they had too many bad habits and were dirty, untidy and poor. Thus not ideal tenant material for the average buy to let.

Then developers, universities and even the landlords themselves realised they were looking at a huge, untapped source. Students were getting wealthier and choosier than their struggling forebears. No longer satisfied with living in cramped, scruffy digs they wanted places of their own with all mod cons and privacy.

Purpose-built blocks started going up in the student cities while universities formed partnerships with developers to build high-spec accommodation to replace their worthy but dull halls of residence. The digs just fell into disrepair or ended up as unwanted ballast on brownfield sites.

The real pioneers of this change have been the East Midlands cities of Derby, Leicester and Nottingham. The trio have five major universities and a large network of business, medical and law schools and higher education colleges between them. They also host 250,000 students - almost an eighth of the UK's student population.