BTW, the student wrote me back and said that she contacted someone else who was happy to let her use their images for free. 

So all is right with the world. 

Sadly, that's what usually happens.  I get people contacting asking for free footage all the time (I'm a poor indie film maker).  They tend to carpet bomb most sites with their request and eventually they find a sucker.  I don't even bother responding any more, even to tell them no.

I don't think it's just a student-thing only, it's more the "why pay if I can get it for free" philosophy. As I said before, many people I know, who can afford buying or renting DVDs, simply download from the internet. They laugh at the idea of not downloading just because it's illegal. I agree this is more entrained in the younger generations, but I see that in older people, mainly those who lived the boom of internet, when it was a challenge to copy and distribute content.