SPA management, eco-tourism and adventure management are being put on the curriculum of Ireland’s third-level colleges. Degrees in these subjects will cost the Irish taxpayer €38,500 per graduate, or a total of more than €1.5m in the next four years.

There is now a record number of new degree courses, many in areas not traditionally associated with academia. The full list is in today’s Irish University Guide 2008, published by The Sunday Times.

The Higher Education Authority (HEA), which approved the new degrees for taxpayer funding, insists that they are a useful investment as they represent good employment prospects and will help Irish tourism to grow.

Malcolm Byrne, the authority’s communications manager, said: “More and more people realise the value of a piece of paper. We are going to get increasingly more specialist degrees.”

Byrne said there is evidence that Irish students are going to England to study these specialist leisure degrees, so it was important to offer them here.

Organisers of the eco-tourism and green-event management degree, which started earlier this month at Institute of Technology, Sligo, predict that its graduates will earn salaries of €25,000 a year and more.

Athlone Institute of Technology said it anticipates plenty of demand for spa-management graduates, given that more than 50 new spas opened in Ireland over the past two years. The three-year course, partly staged in spas at nearby hotels, teaches massage, holistic and complementary treatments and as well as relevant business skills.

Four-year degree courses in adventure management and resort management will be starting next September at Institute of Technology, Tralee. Students will get instructor qualifications in outdoor sports such as surfing as well as an honours degree.

With a record 20% of courses unfilled after the first round of offers in August in 900-plus degree and certificate courses, some will question the appropriateness of making degrees out of what were previously skills learnt on the job.

The empty spaces cost the taxpayer several million euros a year. in wasted resources. A high number of vacancies were left on computer degree courses, even though the IT sector is suffering a skills shortage.

A record 40,000 took up course offers this year, representing 60% of the 18 and 19-year-olds at third level. As the government has a target of 72% completing a degree or certificate by 2020, the proliferation of courses will continue.

The competition to lure students with attractive sounding courses is set to intensify. Seven sports degrees have been created, five degrees are related to computer games and four have “forensic” in their titles.

Waterford Institute of Technology’s applied electronics is being rebranded as a degree in entertainment systems. Tipperary Institute’s rural development degree is being changed to the snazzier-sounding “environmental and natural resource management”.

Analysis undertaken for today’s University Guide reveals that institutes of technology, originally designed to offer only technology-based courses, are increasingly providing arts-related degrees. This shifting emphasis is likely to be considered in the review of third-level education which Batt O’Keeffe, the education minister, is to commission in the coming weeks.

Despite the 14% increase in attendance at third-level in the past five years, standards are supposedly improving. Some 56% of students at the republic’s seven universities and 14 institutes of technology graduated last year with a first or 2.1 degree. Five years ago only 49% achieved this standard.

The fastest growing university was NUI, Maynooth, Co Kildare, which has the best record for employment.

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