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Tue 01 Jan 2010Too many universities, or too few?
Madam, – Contrary to Peter Sutherland’s opinion (Home News,January 23rd), there is little to suggest that Ireland has too many universities. We have seven universities for our population of 4.5 million, while Finland has 10 universities, six institutes with university status, and 28 polytechnics for its population of 5.3 million. Sweden has 17 universities for its 9.3 million people. Neither is there evidence that bigger universities are necessarily better. For instance, the average number of students in the top 10 universities in the world is only 16,700, which is smaller than the current number of students in UCC (18,800).
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