ALL THIRD-LEVEL institutions have been given six months to respond to official proposals which would result in the merger of many smaller colleges and the development of regional clusters of universities or institutes of technology.
The Higher Education Authority (HEA) yesterday issued a series of discussion papers on third-level education reform which will form a blueprint for the development of the sector over the next 10-20 years.
The documents seek to bring about more co-operation between institutions, and set out the criteria for designating colleges as technological universities.
In addition, they state that funding will be based on performance measured against new targets such as research, teaching and delivering courses online and engagement with both industry and the community.
All colleges have been asked to make a submission to the authority by the end of July this year setting out their strategic intentions.
On foot of this, the authority will advise the Minister for Education on a new blueprint for third-level education, including the number, type and locations of education institutions. The authority intends that this structure will be published by the end of this year.
The proposals received a cautious welcome from some colleges which hope to merge and form technological universities over the coming years.
Athlone IT, which is seeking to establish a technological university with other institutes of technology at Dundalk, Galway-Mayo, Letterkenny and Sligo, said the criteria published yesterday were “challenging, but not insurmountable”.
The institute’s president, Ciarán Ó Catháin, said the colleges would need State support to bring some of their activity – such as research – up to a level that would meet new requirements.
However, the union which represents university lecturers warned that plans to merge third-level institutions should not be used as an excuse to cut staff numbers. Mike Jennings, general secretary of the Irish Federation of University Teachers, said many of these colleges were already understaffed even though they had record numbers of students.
The HEA’s three documents follow consultation over several months over the implementation of a new national strategy for higher education.
Towards a Future Higher Education Landscapeprovides a basis for institutions to reflect on their current and future profile. In addition, two other documents, Process and Criteria for Designation as a Technological Universityand Guidelines on Regional Clusters, offer detailed information on how existing institutions would fit into a new education system.
The documents state that the State’s policy in the past for growing demand for higher education had resulted in a “crowded and unstructured landscape”.
At present, it says, there are 44 institutions which offer undergraduate courses through the CAO system, while more than 20 offer research programmes.
On smaller colleges, it says that these would be consolidated through incorporation or merger with existing universities, institutes of technology or into technological universities.
