BACK IN THE DIM and distant past, when relatively few people went on to study at university, an arts degree was considered by many people to be the ultimate passport to success.

By the 1970s, however, degrees in commerce, law and architecture had become all the rage; in some quarters arts degrees were regarded as being somewhat second rate. "She's only doing arts" was a regularly heard refrain. There was a widespread perception that arts degrees led nowhere and that arts graduates were ill-equipped to compete successfully in the job market.

The good news is that all this has changed. It is now widely recognised that during their undergraduate years, arts graduates develop a wide range of highly desirable skills which are sought after by employers.

Arts programmes provide young people with an invaluable training," says Eileen Cosgrove, UCC's careers adviser for arts. "Arts courses require people to put a lot of themselves into their work. They have to use initiative and develop good research, communication, evaluation and analytical skills. These skills are highly transferable and will serve people well in a rapidly changing world."

"Arts has come into its own," confirms Sandra Walker, a careers advisor at UCD. "In the 1970s, people were still thinking about single, lifelong careers. Now people have to be flexible, creative and adaptable, and it is recognised that arts graduates have these skills," she says.

The big plus about arts degrees, according to many careers advisers, is that they are "non-limiting" in terms of career. Opt for a narrowly focused course and you may well find in the years to come that your career choices are extremely narrow. With an arts degree though, you're likely to be faced with a whole range of career options.

And if, when you go to college, you're undecided about which particular career path you would like to take - and surely most people are - by doing arts you can postpone the big decision until you're in a better position to make the right choice.

Some of the best advice around for anyone currently deciding on third-level courses comes from Loretta Jennings, careers and appointments officer at St Patrick's College, Maynooth. "First year students often ask me: `Which subjects will make me more employable?' I tell them to do the subjects that they are best at. It's preferable to do something that you are good at and that you enjoy than something you'll have to struggle with.

"It's the skills that you have developed and the standard of your degree rather than the particular subjects studied that employers are looking for," she says. At Maynooth almost three-quarters of the job vacancies that come into the careers-service office are not specific to any discipline, she adds.

However, relatively few arts graduates now go directly into employment. The development in recent times of more one-year, vocationally oriented postgraduate diploma programmes - in subjects including business, computer and legal studies and accountancy - has served to increase the range of options open to arts graduates.

"Arts graduates are in a position to pick up vocational skills very quickly," Cosgrove says. "A one year postgraduate diploma in business studies will bring them to the same level as business graduates, but they will have a broader view."

Professor Nollaig Mac Congail, UCG's dean of arts, agrees that this career path is now common. "In the last decade there's no such thing as an arts degree providing a direct entry to any vocation. You have to factor in extra training."

Figures for the academic year 1994-95 show that almost two thirds of UCG's arts graduates went into research or further academic study or embarked on other vocational and professional training, teacher training, or work experience and training schemes. Maynooth's most recent figures (1995 graduates) indicate that 30 per cent of arts graduates went directly into employment including insurance, banking, transport, the public service and manufacturing.