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Batt O’Keeffe: Man of Action
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After establishing himself as the one minister making actual decisions during the recent cold spell, Batt O’Keeffe has struck again today with an abrupt decision to abolish the National University of Ireland. As anyone with a degree from UCD, UCG, UCC, and Maynooth knows, NUI is the body that actually awards the degree, and also set the basic matriculation requirements. Apparently An Bord Snip had questioned the usefulness of this confederal structure and the Minister now agrees; each university will now take its over its own standard setting and degree awarding functions. Is this a good idea?
NUI seemed like a mechanism to ensure some quality control and harmonization as the university system expanded. Maybe it’s not needed any more. But its abolition seems to come as news to NUI itself, which still has an optimistic-sounding website and Maurice Manning just into his term as Chancellor. Indeed, the list of chancellors is a mini-history of Ireland, with Dev holding the slot continuously from Independence to his death, then TK Whitaker for 20 years, then Garret Fitzgerald, and now Manning apparently to bring down the curtain. I suppose that an organizational cull has to start somewhere but it seems like a strange place to start. Hopefully the universities didn’t have their degree parchments for 2010 printed already.
“Hopefully the universities didn’t have their degree parchments for 2010 printed already.”
Bet they do!
As a graduate of the University of Limerick it is great to see UCC, UCD, UCD and Maynooth finally being promoted to full University status to join UL, DCU and Trinity as proper universities.
OK joking aside this is a fairly pityful reform of the University sector. We need to examine the numerous ITs around the country and see which of them are valuable and which are dead weight.
- DIT and Waterford should be upgraded to full “Technological Universities” (a term which is quite well known in high-tech Asian countries).
- GMIT should be merged with UCG.
- Cork IT and Tralee IT should be merged with UCC. This gives UCC badly needed capability to expand.
- Limerick IT should merged with Limerick University and ideally transferred to the greenfield site on the Clare side of the Shannon on UL’s Campus. Much of LITs lands are not in the most desirable area but it has some city centre locations that could be sold for development. The same should be considered for Mary I which occupies a huge footprint close to the City centre.
- Dun Laoighaire IT, Blanchardstown IT, Tallaght should be merged with the new Dublin Technological University and transferred to their new campus under construction in Grangegorman. This should be able to be accomplished with limited additional construction cost and the sale of the IT properties and lands will help make up the shortfall DIT is looking at following the collapse in value of their existing city centre locations.
- Tipperary Institute, Dundalk IT, Athlone, Letterkenny, Carlow and Sligo should all be closed.
Once the ITs are closed, merged or upgraded the pointless “Institutes of Technology Ireland” organisation can follow NUI into the abyss. The HEA, CAO, HETAC and any other Quango dealing with post second level education should be merged into one organisation.
The 6 senate university seats should be combined into one pool with all Third Level graduates given voting rights.
Colm, I can see the logic of some of your proposed reforms, but why should any graduate get a vote for the Senate? Giving more graduates the vote would surely just entrench this anachronistic idea.
William,
Agree. Personally I think we should drop one TD from every constituency and have the candidate who finishes in the last seat (i.e. 3rd in a 3 seat, 4th in a 4 seat or 5th in a 5 seat) in an election actually go into the senate (i.e. a 3 seat constituency actually returns 2 TDs and 1 Senator). But is any senate seats are elected by graduates it should be by all not a few.
Doing this suggests that changes to the 3rd level seats must be in the offing as legislation will need to be introduced to accommodate the disappearance of the NUI. With no NUI in existence there can be no ‘NUI’ panel, something will have to be legally marked as replacing it and that seems the opportune time to sort all the 6 seats out. Now I’ll believe it when it actually happens but I’m expecting that this will be followed in the next while by an announcement from the Department of the Env.
William, extending the franchise within the 3rd level seats should be a legislative first step in giving all Irish citizens a vote in the Seanad elections. It would overnight allow roughly 20% of the adult population have a vote. The other changes needed to the Seanad require a referendum which I’d support and happily campaign for. We’ve had other posts on the seanad so I’m going to avoid rehashing them here.
“Much of LITs lands are not in the most desirable area but it has some city centre locations that could be sold for development. The same should be considered for Mary I which occupies a huge footprint close to the City centre.”
Ah yes. Development.
NAMA anyone?
This arrogance merely further demonstrates the autocratic nature of the current government. The NUI is an important instrument in higher education. It functions as the gatekeeper and ensures standards of the highest level. It is the last bastion of academic collegiality in Ireland (the IUA has ensured that Managerialism has replaced the collegiate system in the Universities).
This is the beginning of the corporatisation and privatisation of higher education in Ireland.
Eoin,
Well the sale of LIT lands doesn’t have to be immediate. I’m just saying that there are considerable savings to be made by merging LIT into UL. These savings would initially be in administration, duplication of academic work etc but perhaps the land value could also be a benefit. Certainly that would be the case for DIT who are looking at a major financial shortfall and selling the properties of the other politically established ITs in the Dublin area would help reduce the bill to the taxpayer.
Blabber,
No one outside the NUI offices think the NUI do anything other than take credit for the hard work of the individual universities. Which NUI administrator are you?
It has no role as a “gatekeeper” in any way as the CAO is the student gatekeeper and employment law and internal policies are the staff gatekeeper. It stamps it’s name on the final parchment but academic “standards of the highest level” are ensured by the academic staff of the college and the external examiners who really have nothing to do with the NUI.
It isn’t the “last bastion of academic collegiality” in Ireland. The NUI and non-NUI universities already work closely together on numerous issues of common interest completely separate from the NUI. The NUI is in fact working against academic collegiality because it excludes TCD, UL and DCU.
NUI is the ultimate example of the “Managerialism” you object to as it takes no hands on role yet claims all the credit. This is not the beginning of “corporatisation and privatisation of higher education in Ireland”. That started when UL and DCU were set up much to the annoyance of the NUI. From day one these universities had a strong business focus because great people like Ed Walsh had to turn to corporations and private companies for support. Support which should have come from NUI but was singularly lacking in the “last bastion of academic” snobbery.
So no third level institution north of the Dublin-Galway parallel?… Brilliant, visionary idea…..no actually Dublin-centric nonsense.
I could point out the excellent Queens University but instead I’ll just settle for saying 1 Galway Limerick Cork and Waterford are not Dublin centric. 2 It is better in the long run for the career and development of the student to attend an academically excellent university and not a glorified PLC centre only in existance because it is located in a marginal constituency
“Tipperary Institute, Dundalk IT, Athlone, Letterkenny, Carlow and Sligo should all be closed.”
Why? That seems like a bizzare plan. Sure, some are better than others,and even within these institutes it seems that courses vary in level of quaility but what makes you think that these should be closed? What is your knowledge of these institutes?
Now if only the NUI had the foresight to organize a bit of auld greyhound racing on the side, they’d be safe from the quango cull.
Hi Niall,
I have experience across the third level sector including both the IT and University elements. From that experience I believe education in Ireland is stretched far too thin. A population of 4 million is over served by number of institutions but completely underserved by quality of those institutions. We have reached a point where a degree is of little more value than the Leaving certificate. Graduates are leaving our ITs with a degree on paper but a level of subject knowledge that could be matched by a 14 year old with google.
We need to focus our resources and money into a small number of large excellent institutions rather than a large number of small institutions. By expanding classes we can still cater for a similar number of students but give them exposure to the top academics in their chosen fields rather than whoever had a masters in the subject and was willing to move to Letterkenny. Money saved by closing the excess institutions can be diverted to research in the remaining universities. Numbers of graduates is not a sustainable advantage. India and China are pumping out tens of thousands of engineers each year. If we are to compete we need to focus on quality graduates rather than quantity.
Colm, that’s a reasonable enough argument. Concentrating resources is not a bad idea. However, I’m interested to know just why you think that closing the above is better than simply merging some of them, or, heaven forbid, transferring resources currently located at larger instututes to these locations.
For example, I’ve always tended to believe that Sligo and Letterkenny ITs would be better off merged. Throw in Leitrim, and the three counties in question have a population of circa 225,000. Include areas of north Roscommon and east Mayo where relatively large numbers of SIT’s students come from, and you could probably say that the population these colleges cater to is around 250,000. To put that in perspective, that figure is equivalent to the total combined populations of Cork, Galway and Limerick cities (not including the metropolitan areas surrounding these cities).
It would be horrible planning to leave an area of that size and with that population, without any third level institution – especially when you consider that Donegal has the worst unemployment levels in the country. In fact, the economies of both Sligo and Letterkenny depend on these institutions to keep them afloat. Remove them, and you cripple the region. If that doesn’t seem like such a terrible thing to some people, just think of the social welfare costs etc.
I use Sligo and Letterkenny as an example, because they would be more familiar to me than those other institutions you proposed we close. It may be that the above arguments could also apply to other regions, but if so, probably to a lesser extent. Now I imagine Dundalk could probably be closed without too much impact to that region due to the fact that it is within commuting distances of several other third level institutions. Carlow and Athlone, less so. Tipperary Institute, probably not, though I may be mistaken.
My preferred option would have been closer co-operation between Ireland’s third level institutes. This is not facilitated by the abolition of a body like the NUI. While the NUI might have benefited from reform, even radical reform, if there is no body to co-ordinate universities’ efforts, then they end up competing with each other, when we need them to focus on matching international rivals.
Colm
the CAO is actually a private company where as the HEA and HETAC are semi-state bodies.