For the baby-boom generation, decorating a college dormitory room in the 1960s and ’70s was a fairly simple procedure.

You threw up a poster of some rock star, such as Jimi Hendrix, on one bare beige wall and used a black light to give it that all-important hallucinogenic glow. On the opposite bare beige wall, you hung another poster with the word “peace” or “love” or both in its design, plugged in a lava lamp for ambience and – voila! – a dorm room that any self-respecting flower child could be proud to call home. Aside from the college-issued dresser with the sticky drawers, furnishings consisted of a shelf made of two cinder blocks with a wooden board on top, a stereo – if you were lucky enough to own one – and an illegal hot plate or toaster for those nights when you simply could not stomach any more of the slop they were serving in the cafeteria.

But in the words of Bob Dylan, whose squinty visage figured prominently in the dorm decor of decades ago, the times, they are a-changin’.

According to a recent Associated Press story, a growing number of today’s college students are turning their campus bunkers into stylish and highly personalized havens that would make their parents’ undergrad digs seem positively Spartan and uninhabitable by comparison. And money appears to be no object. The National Retail Federation reports that college students spent $2.6 billion in dorm room furnishings last year, and another $7.5 billion for the assorted electronic gadgetry to keep them happily and productively wired to the world. That’s an average cost of just under $800 per student for the necessities of modern campus life, which is causing a chorus of joyous retailers to sing the praises of higher education.

“College students have money to spend, and the stores are going all out,” said a spokeswoman at the NRF. “They have wandered into a gold mine.”

This fall, Target will begin offering free round-trip bus trips from at least seven university campuses around the country to its nearby stores, the AP reported. The Web sites of Bed, Bath & Beyond and Linens ‘n Things even feature dorm registries – no, that was not a typo – and Best Buy is furnishing model dorm rooms at 10 college campuses to showcase their wares.

JCPenney is doing a brisk business in bright-blue curved rockers and hot-pink lamps and “boom cube ottomans,” which have built-in speakers that vibrate to the sound of music. Over at Target, students are lining up to buy what the store calls “chef-made dorm fridge packages,” which combine a mini refrigerator, hot pot, iron, coffee maker and even a sandwich maker. Instead of the handy old milk crates that once served as junk bins for their parents, students are snatching up brightly colored items called “mesh cubes” and microsuede storage containers that match their bed coverlets. At the electronics emporiums, students are stocking up on desktop computers, laptops, monitors, printers, scanners, DVD players, iPods, Blackberrys, Palm Pilots, TVs and, of course, stereos to make those fancy ottomans vibrate.

One helpful retailer even provides “dorm room experts” who offer storage tips to stressed-out students who can’t imagine how to cram their mountains of stuff into dorm rooms that haven’t gotten any bigger since their parents inhabited them.

I think this is what we boomers used to call a generation gap.