A university has launched Britain’s first degree for student spooks – a postgraduate course in SPYING.
Students will research organised crime and study terror chief Osama Bin Laden and the Mafia.
The MSc in Intelligence Data is the first spying course to be offered in the country.
Coventry University is running the 12-month course in response to the high number of students wanting to work in the secret intelligence industry.
Applications have risen almost 90 per cent since September 11, 2001.
The £6,800 course will teach students how to interpret data taken from secret intelligence reports and build profiles of criminals for the police and anti-terror organisations.
Helen Poole, Associate Head of the Department of Social and Community Studies at the university, said: ”Students will be interpreting and using information and data to map patterns in criminal behaviour.
”They will be learning to make sense of lots of data in order to come up with policing strategies from how to tackle thefts to cracking international crime rings.
”We are not teaching students how to hide behind newspapers with holes cut out for eyes – we are teaching them how to use the intelligence gathered in the field.”
One of Britain’s most eminent former police chiefs Sir David Philips has helped draw up the course and will be personally delivering a number of lectures on information gathering.
Dir David, a former President of the Association of Chief Police Officers, said: ”Sources of intelligence have transformed, multiplied and extrapolated in the information age.
”This Masters-level course will bring out the structural and intellectual difficulties in developing intelligence at tactical and strategic levels.
”The team at Coventry University embraces a mix of experience and intellectual accomplishment and are excited by the challenges in the higher study of intelligence.
”I look forward to adding my own professional insights.”