THE CURRENT recession is really engendering a feeling of 1980s déjà vu; long dole queues, boarded-up shops, hundreds of people applying for tens of jobs.

Of course the summers were much better back then but at least the general levels of wealth in the country are much higher now.

The 1980s sprang to mind again when a press release from UCD’s Quinn School of Business passed over our desk this week.

Basically, 40 unemployed people will get their fees paid to do a bachelor of business studies through the distance learning programme and they will also keep their dole, sorry, jobseeker’s allowance. Of course in the days before computerised systems, students signing on was a common, if illegal, phenomenon. It really is the 1980s again.

Glibness aside, it does look like an ideal opportunity for the recently unemployed to re-engage with formal education and as business qualifications in this country go, you don’t get much better than UCD’s Quinn School of Business.

The initiative is part of the Government’s catchily entitled Labour Market Activation programme, in which 1,500 undergrad places at third-level institutes were made available this week. Although participants keep their entitlements, the fine print says they must search for work while at college.