All change for the RTCs

A DEBATE on the changing role of RTCs and a re naming of the existing institutions has been raging across the 11 campuses over the past two weeks.

The governing bodies of most of the regional colleges have held meetings to discuss their future academic, status, what they will be called and how they will fit into the broader higher education picture.

All, with the exception of Cork RTC, have rowed in behind a joint proposal which would involve the setting up of an Irish Technological University - or National Technological University - to validate RTC courses (see panel below). This proposal will now be put to the Minister for Education, but it is by no means certain that it will be, accepted.

What is certain is that the RTCs are going to be re named and that their relative status in the higher education framework will also change. But what exactly the new title will be it is much less clear.

The present debate started when the Higher Education Authority (HEA) issued a report on the future development of higher education last summer, recommending that the RTCs be named Regional Technological Institutes.

But nothing happened until the Minister for Education, Niamh Bhreathnach, spoke as a seminar in Dundalk RTC just before Easter. In a very carefully worded speech, she committed herself to a name change.

"The report (HEA) recommends that your title be changed to `Regional Institute of Technology'. I accept the need for a title which more accurately reflects your higher education status and the range of your activities." She then offered to consult the RTCs "to ascertain your views on the appropriateness of the new title", promising that the retitling would be in place by college opening this September.

So, by the autumn, RTCs will no longer be RTCs, it appears. The colleges themselves set about providing their own recommendations, which resulted in the Irish Technological University (see panel) proposal, approved by most of the RTC governing bodies last week and now forwarded to the Minister.

The RTCs' proposal goes much further than that suggested in the HEA's report and would effectively give university status to RTC certificate, diploma and degree courses; whether the Minister is prepared to accept this is another matter.

What both the HEA and the Minister accept is that the role of the RTCs has changed since their foundation 25 years ago, when they were seen mainly as providers of technician level courses at certificate and diploma level. Increasingly, they are providing degrees - and in some cases rivalling or even outperforming university or DIT degrees. They now account for more higher education entrants than the universities and the DIT combined.

The HEA report had recommended that the proportion of degree places on offer in the RTCs should be increased from the present 15 per cent to 20 per cent, and the Minister has agreed to this. She has also put in train the recommendation in the Government's own White Paper on Education which will see the RTCs come under the umbrella of the HEA, as designated institutions. This will mean that they will be funded centrally through the HEA and will become, so to speak, part of the centralised family of higher education institutions, co ordinated through the HEA. (Traditionally, they have been funded through the local Vocational Education Committees.)

This all comes in the wake of new RTC legislation which came into effect in 1994 and effectively freed the RTCs from VEC control and established a new academic and administrative structure within the colleges, with their own academic boards. So, combined the changes will have far reaching effects.

But why the need for a name change? What's wrong with "Regional Technical College"?

The colleges feel that the word "technical" has traditionally had a negative connotation in Ireland going back to the days of vocational, schools being known as "techs". "Technological" is the more internationally recognised designation and more accurately reflects the work now being done by the colleges. Even second level schools have been dropping the designation "technical".

The colleges also encounter difficulties with the word "regional". It has overtones of provincialism, can convey the idea that they do not have a national status, the colleges argue, and more importantly, the term "regional college" does not exist in the lexicon of higher education internationally. Increasingly, the description "college" is used to describe non third level institutions, they argue.

The RTCs have to operate in the international context, the colleges' document points out. Change is needed "to enhance the international standing" of their graduates qualifications, it argues.

But it was probably the disaster which resulted from the British government abolishing its two tier system of universities and polytechnics and simply renaming virtually all higher education institutions as universities in which catapulted the RTCs thinking about a central university level validating system.

The new British system resulted in an effective free for all, with the newly created universities a scrambling for students and each awarding its own degrees. The common belief is, according to Gay Corr, director of Galway RTC, that it has resulted in a levelling down rather than a levelling up of university standards; the end result is that some British university degrees are not worth the paper they are written on.

A NATIONAL, centralised university validating body would effectively ensure policing of standards and the maintenance of a high status for RTC courses and awards and prevent the same thing happening here, the colleges felt.

Though the colleges are less keen, to admit this, the change in nomenclature in Britain clearly gave a new urgency to the issue of changing the name and status of the RTCs here.

With some 10,000 Irish students applying for places in Britain and Northern Ireland, the newly designated `universities' were a clear threat to the RTCs. "Of course, we were affected," says Corr. "Students saw themselves as being able to walk into university degree courses with lower points than they'd need for a diploma here."

Ray Griffin, director of Waterford RTC says that it shifted the emphasis and "created the impression that degrees were available for everyone". So, the problem became: how does a regional technical college compete with a British university?

On the home front, another issue had begun to exercise the RTCs. Up to now their standards have been monitored and courses validated by the National Council for Educational Awards (NCEA). But the NCEA has expanded in recent years to take private third level colleges and a whole series of what the RTCs would see as fringe colleges under its remit.

"No distinction was ever made, between small private colleges with one NCEA validated certificate course and an RTC with a wide range of degree and postgraduate programmes," says Sean McDonagh, director of Dundalk RTC. The feeling is widespread that the NCEA was devaluing the currency of RTC courses and awards by spreading itself so widely.

The idea of a central validating technological university would neatly dispose of that problem, too. In the UK, a body similar to the NCEA - the CNAA - was abolished a number of years ago and the RTCs argue that internationally, validating is mainly done by universities or other autonomous higher education institutions.

The proposal to bring the NCEA in under the umbrella of the new TEASTAS validating body - which will deal with apprenticeship and many other vocational and educational awards - seemed to represent a downgrading for the NCEA in any case; thus an added attraction to a central university type validating body.

If the RTCs become institutes of a new Irish Technological University, what happens to the DIT? The feeling is that it would probably be designated a university in its own right. Under its new legislation, the Minister for Education has the power to allow it to award its own degrees, an issue which a working party is examining at the moment. With its 15,000 full time students it actually has more students than any university except UCD and would be extremely likely to be designated a full, university - or technological university - in its own right.

Up to now universities have been mainly providers of degree courses in Ireland, but the DIT and the RTCs have a huge programme of certificate and diploma courses, too. There is no reason why a university should not award certificate and diplomas, the RTCs argue, citing the example of the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland which has been doing this very successfully for many years.

THE RTCs accept that they are different from conventional universities - as the former polys were in the UK. They want to continue their tradition of practical, applied courses and their large certificate/ diploma core. What they want, their document says, is "parity of social esteem", not to be equal or the same.

Ireland is not the only state juggling with the upgrading of a two tier higher education system at the moment. Totally co incidentally, New Zealand has recently come up with a plan very similar to the RTCs proposal and in Finland, a number of technological and specialist colleges are also being grouped into a number of technological universities.

"Our recommendations provide for arrangements appropriate to the international framework in which our colleges operate," concludes the RTC document.