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OPINION:The Minister for Education, Batt O’Keeffe, placed great store on the need for greater rationalisation among third-level colleges when launching the new national strategy for higher education recently, writes FERDINAND VON PRONDZYNSKI.

The message is that rationalisation is the main challenge and the key objective for third level right now. This would also have been a message coming from the Government’s document published in December 2008, Building Ireland’s Smart Economy. This states: “Ireland has a relatively large number of third-level institutions.