subjects that may not offer immediate rewards, but would be fulfilling and good for their personal development, Universities across the country are reshaping their entire teaching and learning agenda to this new marketplace in education.
And when recruiting students seeking to buy themselves a ticket to a better paid job, they also find themselves under pressure to ensure that nobody fails - or the future flow of customers might be jeopardised.
Universities therefore face All those who feared the possibility of a Tory revival cashing in on the demoralisation of New Labour will have been both amused and relieved at the hiarious spectacle of Michael Howard sacking one of his deputy chairmen Howard Flight, and Fatal Flight then putting the boot in, by removing him as a candidate.
Flight, with 11 directorships
and reputed to be the second wealthiest MP in the Commons, had been at the centre of discussions on plans to cut back public spending, to open the way for Howard's promised 24bn tax cut. But he sought to reassure sceptic Tories and business chiefs that the spendIng cuts promised as part of the Tory agenda for the public sector would really happen, got carried away and promised much bigger cuts than the party leadership was telling the electorate.
In fact both major parties are looking to "cut waste" and slash spending on the civil service: Gordon Brown has outlined cuts of £22 billion, while Howard Flight and David James drew up a longer list totalling 235 billion.
But both party programmes actually look to increase public spending year on year - New Labour by 3 per cent, the Tories by 2: this explains Labour's Insistence that the Tories would bring cuts of £35 billion, savaging basic services.
Howard Flight may or may not have let the cat out of the bag on a secret agenda of cuts: what he has almost certainly achieved is guaranteeing that it Will be Gordon Brown's cuts, and not Michael Howard's that the public sector unions will have to fight in the next five years.