How important is it that students blog?

Very important I would say.

Unfortunately few students to my knowledge do,prefering the mediums of facebook,bebo etc.
Blogging is a must for any journalism student,a cheap way to get yourself published,noticed and a chance to experiment with styles,topics etc.
Strangely though,I don’t recall anyone (as a student journalist year 2) telling me to blog.

That was my comment to Paul Bradshaw who says

students blog while they’re told to, but the majority stop once the teaching ends. It’s like someone saying they want to be a musician, but refusing to play any gigs until they sign a record deal.

And Neil Mcintosh who says

I tell all the journalism students I meet this: blogs are the minimum. There’s no excuse for a student journalist who wants to work online not to have one. The only exception (and even then…) might be if they were heavily involved in student media, or were working for a publication part-time, or were doing some kind of other digital work which trumped having a mere blog. And no, MySpace/Bebo/Facebook pages don’t count