College Choice: With the ESRI forecasting a growth rate of 3.5 per cent in 2004, following on from a rate of 2.8 per cent in 2003, the prospects for employment of business graduates is good, writes Brian Mooney.
This is a positive message for the 18 per cent of degree and 36 per cent of cert/diploma applicants who list business courses as their first choice on their CAO applications.
These 10,000 plus degree and 17,000 cert/diploma applicants have a vast range of choice to select from.
Virtually every college in the CAO system offers a range of business courses, so unlike my other articles, I will make no attempt to provide a comprehensive list of choices available.
The best advice I can offer prospective business students is to devise your own combination of subjects and then go and find which colleges offer that combination.
Do you want to combine a range of general business subjects with a language and spend a year studying in a continental university? No problem the choice is available at a college near you.
Do you want to combine a general business qualification, with a specialisation in accounting, human resource management, actuarial and finance, legal studies, or marketing?
Again each of the above combinations is available.
Virtually any business course will have courses on marketing, accounting, and banking, management, statistics, human resources and information technology. Employers know this and expect graduates to have a grasp of all these areas.
If you are planning to apply for a university degree, one of the broadest business courses is TCD's Business, Economic and Social Studies course (TR 081), known as BESS by most students. It is always popular because it involves elements of business studies, economics, politics and even sociology.
UCD has settled into their new Quinn School where all students operate through the use of laptop computers, online lectures with a huge saving on traditional note taking, a personalised student Intranet and the benefit of small class groups.
Apart from the traditional B.Comm degree, students can opt for an international degree with Irish, German, french, Spanish, or Italian as their chosen language, or they can specialise in actuarial and finance, legal, or financial economics.
Those interested in human resource management as their specialisation have the accounting and human resource management at the National College of Ireland at their fantastic new campus beside the IFSC.
NUI Maynooth has its finance degree, aimed at our growing financial services sector. Students also have the option of taking another subject from the arts area, for example, English, French, Spanish, geography, German, history, Latin, maths, maths physics and statistics.
I am particularly interested in their new Finance and Venture Management degree (MH402), aimed at developing the skills of management of innovation. Entrepreneurship is the key to the success of all business so I will be interested to see how this programme develops.
DCU have developed a very strong range of business degrees over recent years, covering all the combinations already covered.
Their business studies course (DC 111) reports high graduate employment figures due in part to the 12-month work experience component known as INTRA.
The other interesting option at DCU, which is not offered anywhere else, is its European Business (Transatlantic Studies) studies course (DC 116), conducted with a US partner university, North-Eastern in Boston.
On this course the students spend 2½ years in Ireland and 1½ years in Boston.
The DIT apart from their standard business degree and international options have specialisations in information systems, marketing, retail management and transport and logistics.
Given the high demand for business courses at degree level, the points requirements can be quite high, ranging in the high four hundreds. For this reason, there is a strong market for business degrees at far lower points requirements through the private fee paying colleges in Dublin.
Griffith College and Dublin Business School, both offer three business degrees, through the CAO, with American College offering International Business and Portobello offering a BA in Business Studies. Portobello also offer a very popular, accounting and finance degree by direct application.
NUI Cork and Galway offer a comprehensive range of degree options in business, covering the entire spectrum. Galway has an interesting Business and Corporate Law (GY25) option. I must draw attention to a number of interesting programmes in UL, law and accounting, international insurance and European studies, and financial mathematics.
In the Institutes of Technology sector, Waterford has a wide range of degree programmes, in accounting, marketing, retail management, business studies with marketing, or French, or German.
Dundalk similarly has a good choice offering accounting and finance, marketing with e-business, or french, or German. Limerick offers a tourism or event management option. Galway-Mayo offers a business degree taught through the medium of Irish (GA144).
A good research method for students is to access Qualifax, in school or get your own disk at www.qualifax.ie and use the search engine to identify the business courses of interest to you. You can do this by type, level or location.
Finally a word of warning to all prospective business students, a basic level of competence in maths is essential to survive in a business course.
Failure in maths at the Leaving Certificate denies thousands of students third level education each year and an inability to cope with the maths requirement on their chosen business course is the main reason for drop-out and failure in college.
If you want to study business don't let your maths slip. Colleges should also be mindful of putting in place supports for students in maths.
Brian Mooney's column on CAO options will appear daily in the run-up to the February 1st deadline.
r You can e-mail Brian Mooney on bmooney@irish-times.ie
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