They travel in their gap year before university in the vacations while at university and many also take time off

They travel in their gap year before university, in the vacations while at university and many also take time off after graduating to see the world. “They have a very developed interest that is based on having been to these places,” says Professor Duncan McCargo, head of politics at Leeds University. “They’re much more internationalist in their outlook than we were 20 years ago.”Applications for degree subjects go in cycles. In the Sixties, the cool degree was sociology; in the Seventies it was English; and in the Eighties it was economics.

However, in the late Thatcher era, there was an upturn of interest in politics precisely because Mrs Thatcher was such a strong politician, says Professor Stephen Wilks, of Exeter University Perhaps that is happening again. “There does seem to be a reaction to the leading personalities in the field. Just as Mrs Thatcher generated more interest in politics and therefore more interest in studying the subject so perhaps there is a Blair effect too. It may be that the more controversial he is, the more interested people become.”According to the academics, the politics students of the 21st century are not the stone-throwing protesters of old. “They are not as partisan or biased as they used to be,” says Nicola Phillips. “Rather they are interested in issues for their own sake such as trade, finance and negotiations between governments.”If they are studying at an old university, politics students tend to have high grades at A level as befits such a popular subject.

And when they leave they go into a range of jobs – public administration, the voluntary sector, pressure groups, banking and the media. Politics professors like to emphasise the transferable skills of their students.They learn how to analyse issues, to sift complicated data and come to a view, to make presentations and arguments – just the skills that employers say they want in graduates.Such skills are also taught in other social studies subjects, but some of these subject are not enjoying the same popularity. This year’s figures from the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service show that economics, like politics, has seen a 6.6 per cent increase in applications for the autumn of 2003. But human and social geography have a rise of only 1.6 per cent and sociology has declined 4.8 per cent.If the academics’ analysis is correct and students are responding to a changing global environment, we should see applications for politics rise further in the future. “Suddenly politics really matters,” says Professor Andrew Oswald who teaches economics at Warwick University.”We’re talking about going to war because of politics. A few years ago there was a period when politics didn’t seem to matter It was all consensus and the Third Way. Now all that has gone up in smoke.”‘Studying political ideas has made me think’Daniel Brittain, 20, switched to politics at Leeds University because he was disenchanted with studying law.