The UK Government is naturally at pains to deny that the massive hike in university tuition fees will hit demand for courses. But with graduates likely be burdened with around £60,000 debt, it is clear that many will be hesitating before embarking on a degree.

With a stagnating economy, the graduate jobs market is likely to remain becalmed. The hirers’ market will be reflected in the depressed salaries on offer, and thousands of graduates will be hitting the dole queue. Most will carry eye-popping levels of debt, without a clue as to how it can ever be paid off.

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 begin to examine the ‘necessity’ of undergraduate study, wondering whether it might be deferred or passed up altogether. 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 gaining some career experience first and saving some money before embarking on any field of study.

Picking up genuine business skills and knowledge, combined with a targeted course such as an HND in Business, may not only be a cheaper option but also the one giving the greater chance of success.

A further factor is the growth of courses online, with more attracted to the freedom of study through distance learning. 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. They can be always studying, with their learning enhancing their careers rather than being irrelevant, as it often is now.

With debt and uncertainty looming large in their futures, a generation is re-writing the norms of study in freer and less structured terms. They will benefit from this change in so many ways, and will end up with less debt and more practical knowledge to take on their futures.