The UK Government is naturally at pains to deny that the massive hike in university tuition fees will hit demand for courses. However common sense would suggest that prospective students, facing £60,000 debt before their working lives have even begun are inevitably going to be considering their options.

With economic times uncertain, university graduates are unlikely to face a buoyant jobs market for some time. Employers can escape with paying less, or in the case of internships pay nothing, and many graduates will inevitably be joining the dole queue. Many will be saddled with astronomical debt and with scant prospect of extricating themselves.

With post-graduate options denuded, university may come to be regarded as less of the sure-fire route to success it was historically deemed to represent. Students and their parents will wonder if a degree is any longer a strict necessity, whether it might be better to defer or pass up the option. Vocational courses will grow in attractiveness, with a consequent squeeze on less practical fields such as arts and humanities. And many students will be forced to remain in the family home in order to trim costs.

With job insecurity now an accepted part of working life, young people will be apt to view the classic ’school-university-job for life’ progression as being unrealistic and so will look to hedge their bets, perhaps by first amassing savings and experience in a career.

Acquiring some real-life skills and business knowledge when combined with part-time study of a qualification such as an HND may come to be seen to be not only as the pragmatic option but also the one most likely to succeed.

Moreover, with the increasing range and sophistication of courses online, study through distance learning is growing in popularity. Students can study wherever they can plug in their laptop, at any time of day.

Furthermore, students need not merely go to university then cease study more or less completely. E-learning, by doing away with the classroom, is also eradicating the necessity of an enforced and artificial ‘timeout’ devted only to study.

With debt and uncertainty looming large in their futures, a generation is re-writing the norms of study in freer and less structured terms. However difficult the initial transition, the change will bring practical benefit to their futures.