Will new design course add flair?

UCOL has announced it is planning to offer a new course in interior design.

The two-year diploma at the Whanganui UCOL campus will be added to the polytech's vocations arts muster.

On the face of it, the offering of a course in interior design seems like Kevin McCleod-inspired whimsy, some kind of vocational response to all the home renovation programmes out there. Who knew New Zealand was calling out for interior designers?

How vocational is interior design? A check of online job sites shows Seek had 18 jobs for interior designers, Trade Me 15.

That's not too bad a haul - better than journalism, anyway.

UCOL has said it will be cheap to run - it's already running in Palmerston North with 25 students and will extend to the Wairarapa as well as Wanganui.

However, the career choice is not recommended by CareersNZ.

On its website it says job opportunities for interior designers are poor, because of the struggling construction industry and strong competition for vacancies. The website says in 2012 there was a total of 1255 interior designer jobs in the country. Perhaps the thinking in offering the course is that the tail end of the intensive Christchurch rebuild will provide employment opportunities, or New Zealanders in general are ramping up their flair quotient.

UCOL is just testing the waters with the course, planning for it to start on April 8 but looking for a ``good number of students'', and giving it a two-year run to see if it is successful.

So, not so much a grand design as a trial run.

It's understood tight budgets and a tight economy mean UCOL management is having a hard time. Much is being forced on them.

However, the worry with this kind of flexibility is that Whanganui UCOL may end up not being well known for anything.-->