SINGAPORE - The university for polytechnic upgraders here - the Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT) - will offer five new degrees and take in a record number of 2,080 students this year.

Set up in 2009, SIT, which used to offer only degrees in partnership with overseas universities, launched three of its own degrees in infrastructure engineering, software engineering and accountancy last year and took in 1,800 students in all.

This year, it will offer another four of its own degrees - in building services engineering, pharmaceutical engineering, information security and hospitality business.

It will also offer an engineering degree in electromechanical systems jointly with the DigiPen Institute of Technology, which is renowned for its computer engineering programmes. Undergraduates enrolled in this course will be trained to design and develop complex systems that can range from a robot to a transportation system.

The addition of the new courses will bring its total number of degree programmes to 36, of which seven will be its own. Its other partner universities include the Technical University of Munich and the Culinary Institute of America.

The university, which now operates from an interim campus in Dover Road, has also set up an Enterprise & Innovation Hub where its students will work on projects suggested by firms.

Professor Tan Thiam Soon, president of SIT, said the new degrees are being launched in areas where there is huge demand for specialists.

"They are areas where our students will be able to find good jobs, have good career prospects and which will transform Singapore's economy," he said noting that SIT's aim is to nurture "best-in-class specialists with deep knowledge and skills in a particular field".

SIT's provost Ting Seng Kiong used the example of the building services engineering degree programme. He pointed out that the construction industry continues to grow at an average of 10 per cent yearly. And currently, all buildings in Singapore, both old and new, must undergo the green mark certification process by 2020 and Singapore targets to have 80 per cent of all buildings Green Mark certified by 2030.