A British university has become the first in the country to offer a degree for funeral directors, it said on Friday.
The course at Bath University, in south-west England, will cover everything from bereavement counselling to the disposal of remains.
Organisers say it is necessary because traditional funerals are dying out in Britain, where more and more people opt for ceremonies featuring quirky touches like motorcycle hearses and ashes being launched heavenwards in fireworks.
“In a multicultural society, we now have new and different traditions and rituals,” Alan Slater, chief executive of the National Association of Funeral Directors, which helped develop the course, told the Times.
“In an increasingly secular society, funerals are changing — from being about disposal of remains and remembering the dead, they are becoming more about a celebration of life.”
Una MacConville, from the university, added that there was a growing understanding of death as a “social experience” rather than just a physical event.
Other unusual courses on offer at British universities include golf studies at Lincoln University, eastern England, and psychology of the paranormal at Coventry University in central England.
Staffordshire University, also in the English Midlands, runs a course on football culture which studies the cultural significance of David Beckham. — AFP