Individuals tend to make choices between the available options. When there were no Media Studies courses obviously nobody chose them. Although we advocate free informed choice, I am not sure there is such a thing in reality. It is the business perspective of the universities themselves that make these options available. There are loads of Media Studies courses because they attract lots of applications and universities make an income from them - or is this too cynical? Prospective students must be influenced by the availability of places and possibly and of course mistakenly, see it as an indicator of potential employment in the area. It would be interesting to speculate what would happen if universities were not making business choices themselves when planning their provision - what would they offer?

What happens to the many Media Studies students after they graduate? We know that most don't go into the media but I'm not aware of any research into where they do end up. Does anyone else know of anything? Maybe they all re-train as plumbers - or become accountants, work in IT or the service industries. It would be interesting Impact Analysis to follow up this much cited group and find out what, if anything, a Media Studies degree is adding to the economy of the country.