This summer's university graduates are about to take their first steps on to the job ladder - many already weighed down by debts of up to £15,000.

FORGET sex, drugs and rock'n'roll. Today's student stereotype is a glum graduate staring at a bank balance severely in the red.

Sam Mars should feel happy and relieved, having completed three years of hard work to gain a degree in social anthropology.

However hanging over the mortar-board on his head is a £17,000 debt - a lasting legacy of his time at Sussex University.

He is just one of the latest batch of graduates who have completed their studies only to face a bigger test: How to get back in the black.

New graduates are leaving university with average debts of £10,000, according to a recent Natwest survey.

That is £6,700 higher than three years ago.

The bank discovered it will take new graduates anywhere between four and ten years to pay off their debts.

However, Jacqueline Clowes, finance adviser at Sussex University, believes most students are running up debts even higher than the Natwest survey showed.

She predicts most graduates will end up owing between £12,000 and £15,000.

On top of paying off student loans worth £10,000, many are forced to run up hefty credit card, catalogue and overdraft bills.

This summer's graduates are the first to feel the full impact of the shake-up of student funding in the late Nineties.

Tuition fees were introduced and student grants were replaced with loans.

Jacqueline said: "The maximum student loan is £3,815, which is about £100 a week - that is not enough to pay all your living costs.

"It's very easy to be tempted by offers of credit."

About 1,800 students have called into the Student Advice Centre at Sussex University this year for help - three times as many as last year.

Jacqueline's duties range from advising students how to plan their finances, to negotiating with bailiffs for students already overwhelmed by debt.

Sam, 26, of South Down Mews, Brighton, took a bar job during his first year at Sussex but found the hours interfered with his studies too much.

In his second and third years he worked 16 hours a week in a call centre.

He said: "If I hadn't, there is no way I would have survived."

It meant he missed out on many student activities and clubs, previously seen as an essential part of the university experience.

He now owes £10,000 for his student loan, £6,000 for credit card bills and £1,000 on his overdraft.

The debt has limited his career options and he is envious of friends who enjoyed student grants a few years earlier.

He said: "I would really like to volunteer to teach in South America but unfortunately credit firms don't appreciate things like that.

"You have to keep up the payments.

"It's become a simple fact now: If you're a student, you're going to be in debt. You spend most of your time juggling finances."

Sam would like to work in ethnographic films in London but few paid jobs are available.

He worries he will have to move back in with his parents in Shropshire for the time being - which he describes as "a real step backwards".

As an older student, he at least escaped having to pay tuition fees.

Three of this year's graduands will be prevented from graduating later this month because they have not paid the University of Sussex all their tuition fees.

Two students have not paid the year's £1,075 for tuition, while a third owes £785.

Universities are attempting to recover money they are owed by students by withholding exam marks or barring debtors from graduation ceremonies.

A university spokeswoman said all three had agreed to pay their tuition fees and would graduate when they had cleared the debt.

Dr Sandra Winn, principal lecturer in social policy at Brighton University, has interviewed 400 students every year since 1992 about their finances.

She has found tuition fees have not made the biggest impact, as they are paid during a course and means-tested. Only a quarter of all students pay the full fees.

It is the loss of the student grant that has proved critical.

Of the students questioned last year, 44 per cent had regular jobs during term-time. In 1992, only 26 per cent did.

Two-thirds of students carry out some paid work in addition to their studies.

And a tenth of students are working more than 25 hours a week to raise extra money - ten years ago it was just three per cent.

Dr Winn said: "It's worrying they're having to work so hard. Four-fifths of those in employment say it's having an effect on their studies."

She predicts student debt will continue to rise but hopes potential applicants will not be put off.

A House of Commons committee this week called for tuition fees to be increased and for adjustable interest rates to be charged on student loans.

Graduates start repaying their student loans the April after finishing their course, if their gross income exceeds £10,000 a year.

That will not be an immediate problem for Samantha Holmes, 21, who has just graduated from Sussex with a biochemistry degree.

Samantha, of Ditching Road, Brighton, had financial support from her parents but still has to pay off student loans worth £12,000.

She is off to Oxford this autumn to study for a PhD in clinical medicine, funded by the Medical Research Council.

She said: "I will start paying off the debt when I'm getting a salary.

"But I have known people who have had to work 20-hour weeks on top of their biochemistry degrees, which are tough enough already."