For the UK government, there is just no accounting for good timing

It is suddenly cool to become an accountant in the UK thanks to KPMG, which is running a six-year training scheme to turn school leavers into bean counters.

One of the Big Four accountancies, KPMG will pay tuition fees and accommodation in a special programme that leads to an accounting degree and a professional qualification.

In this time students will also work paid stints at the company's offices. At the end of the six years they will have a job and a salary of close to £50,000 (Dh296,912) a year.

It's a win-win plan, providing a new source of young, fresh labour for KPMG and a free university education for students.

With annual university tuition fees rising to as much as £9,000 from next year, it is no surprise the scheme is attracting the interest of thousands of would-be undergraduates starting higher studies this September.

Competition is fierce, as there are only about 115 places at the three universities involved: Durham, Exeter and Birmingham.

The sponsorship scheme could not come at a better time for the government. News came only last week that top names in the British creative world, such as the fashion designer Stella McCartney and the artist, entrepreneur and collector Damien Hirst, are setting up a fighting fund for protesters of the new tuition fees.

"This scheme will address current concerns around how students can meet the costs of university, and make degrees and professional qualifications available to a broader socio-economic group," says the universities minister David Willetts about the KPMG programme.

Even without the rise in fees, many young Britons, apart from those with wealthy parents, would have gone through the pain of poverty as undergraduates. But these same young people would have enjoyed their university years.

The freedom of living away from parental scrutiny for the first time in their lives and socialising with others from different backgrounds and nationalities can be a most dizzying experience. It is not uncommon for the first year to go by without the undergraduate doing much academic work.

To be bound by a benefactor to achieve good grades from the word go would somehow temper the joy of the university experience.

It may be less onerous if the course is exciting, such as politics or archaeology, but to be spending undergraduate days in a rush of accountancy lectures and part-time work is not exactly an appealing option.

The job that follows - nice reward that it is - could only mean years and years of number-crunching grind and little fun.

As the opening lines of Leisure, the verse by WH Davies, go:

What is this life if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare?

But it is only too easy to romanticise university life, and in today's economic situation many young people, especially those from underprivileged backgrounds, are more realistic about the linked virtues of hard work, money and a debt-free start to working life.

For them, the good news is that KPMG is not the only business offering undergraduate sponsorships, and accounting not the only degree option.

Amid concern over university tuition fees, many companies are overhauling their graduate recruitment strategy. Already large corporate law firms, which hire graduates two years in advance, pay for their recruits' postgraduate legal practice course.

The supermarket chain Morrisons is funding 20 undergraduates to do its three-year bachelor of science degree in retail and management at Bradford University, while Harrods is offering two-year degrees in sales with Anglia Ruskin University.

GlaxoSmithKline, the pharmaceutical and healthcare company, recently said it would reimburse the fees of up to 100 graduates, while KPMG's rival Deloitte plans to take 100 trainees from secondary school this year.

There are now credible hopes that businesses in other sectors will follow suit. Trainees could be sponsored for banking, tourism, astronomy - the potential is limitless.

If this happens, the boost to the government - and the universities, which have been clamouring for higher tuition fees - could be immeasurable.

Is it possible this government might be remembered not for heartless cuts in public spending that led to economic struggle and unemployment, but for cuts that unwittingly spawned a new business culture of investing in people?