The department of government at UCC has launched a CD-ROM outlining details of the BSc in government and public policy. The disk is aimed at career guidance teachers and their pupils.

Established in October 1998, the department of government is, says Professor Neil Collins, "basically a political science department. There was a department here called public administration. I was asked to relaunch the area. To signal a repositioning of the department, its name was changed from public administration, which is a subdiscipline of politics.

"We now look more broadly at political science. The name, government, suggested itself because many of the top politics departments in the US and Britain have the title `government'. "There are people throughout the college who study politics, but not from a political-science viewpoint. People study it as part of history, geography, philosophy and sociology."

The department of government offers a four-year degree. Collins says that the degree is very much driven by the notion of transferable skills.

"Employability is very important. When we set up the degree, we had a panel of would-be employers such as government departments and local authorities. We had a conference of guidance teachers who gave us ideas. "They suggested that potential students would ask about job prospects. So we did some research on other similar degrees in Ireland and Britain. About 70 per cent of them went on to gain employment in the private sector. Of the other 30 per cent, some went into journalism and non-governmental organisations. Others went into the civil service and the foreign service as well as the EU Commission."

The kind of people the degree is aimed at would, says Collins, "probably get a bit excited by the fuss over the Budget and would have an interest in news and current affairs. "We did a survey of the current first-year government students at the beginning of the year. About 75 per cent of them said they were doing the course as it was the nearest to a politics degree at UCC.

"The government degree is in the commerce faculty, so students do some business subjects. We have the involvement of the departments of history, philosophy, law and applied social studies as part of the degree, so it's very broad.

We also have a placement element that is relatively new. In third year, students go on placement. Therefore we have been building up relations with universities in Albany in New York, Bremen in Germany, Barcelona and the Ukraine. We will also be looking to place some of the students in the Oireachtas, in local authorities and as research assistants to parliamentarians."

The newly launched CD-ROM gives a general introduction to the department. It has all the information that an applicant to the course needs. The department of government web page is www.ucc.ie/acad/govt