The first batch of 60 undergraduates at the New College of the Humanities in Bloomsbury, London’s main university quarter, occupy a spacious Georgian house. Opening doors on the way up a grand staircase, your reporter eavesdropped on tutorials on ancient Greece, Romantic poets and economic theory. It feels like a dinky version of an august academic institution. Yet it is a for-profit organisation with a chief executive huddled over spreadsheets downstairs.