£40m waste of the 'Mickey Mouse' degrees

Researchers found more than 400 lightweight courses on offer at 91 different educational institutions.

In each case, the subject matter was judged intellectually threadbare and inferior to on-the-job training.

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Graduates - but are their degrees of any real use? (Posed by models)

Ministers had promised that soft courses would be driven out of universities.

But the report from the Taxpayers' Alliance suggests they are becoming even more common.

The pressure group singled out as especially useless a course called "outdoor adventure with philosophy".

Offered by Marjon College in Plymouth, it features "journeys, environmental management, creative outdoor study and spirituality".

The alliance criticised the University of Glamorgan for a degree course examining "complementary strands of science, science fiction and culture" while the Welsh College of Horticulture was lambasted for offering a BSc in "equestrian psychology".

Researchers said the courses failed to give students a proper education or training.

The alliance said £40million saved from scrapping lightweight degrees would cut tuition fees by more than £100 per student per year.

It said the University of Derby offered 41 "non-courses" - studies that could be taught on the job and demand no academic scholarship.

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Peter Cuthbertson, who wrote the report, said: "Political priorities have led to a never-ending drive to increase the number of students in university.

"As a result, there has been a massive expansion of non-courses of little or no academic merit. The Government has failed in its pledge to abolish Mickey Mouse degrees."

Corin Taylor, the alliance's head of research, said: "Non-courses are university degrees that lend the respectability of scholarly qualifications to non-academic subjects."

Ian Morton, of Universities UK, a higher-education umbrella group, rejected the alliance's criticisms.

"This is a misunderstanding of what is happening both in higher education and in the labour market," he said.

"These so-called non-courses are in fact based on demand from employers and developed in association with them. The skills developed on these courses are essential to the success of the economy."

John Coyne, of the University of Derby, said: "This report is an unfortunate combination of misplaced assertion, misunderstanding of the educational needs of important commercial sectors and poor research. The definition of a non-course is seriously flawed."

A spokesman for the University of Glamorgan said many graduates from its course in "science: fiction and culture" had gone on to become science teachers.

Culture Minister Margaret Hodge coined the phrase "Mickey Mouse course" four years while higher education minister.

She said students would not want to pay for worthless degrees once tuition fees were introduced.