You most likely have not worked in the real world... ahhhh to have a fresh college mind where everything is perfect and there is plenty of time to make everything perfect and just the way *I* want it
There are others that have said it in this thread I'm sure... the perfect code is whatever you think it is, your perfect code is not necessarily mine. If it works, then it is probably perfect to the person that wrote it.
Most of these kids are brand new to programming and it is better served just to learn the language, leave the perfection to College courses if that is what they decide to go into.
That being said, I'm sure there there are many ways to help them learn to write clean code and that really should be what you are asking... how can we help the kids?