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.

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.

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?

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.

This is the beginning of the corporatisation and privatisation of higher education in Ireland.