O'Hare tells Waterford to forget university and keep its wit

Don't pursue university status for Waterford Institute of Technology - such a course could turn out to be counter-productive. That was the advice DCU's former president, Dr Danny O'Hare, gave to Waterford Chamber of Commerce last week. Noting a "worrying" tendency for smaller institutions to go it alone, he said the ITs should work together to gain as many Government resources as possible. Unlike the situation abroad, in Ireland there is too little co-operation between institutions he said.

The main difference between the universities and the ITs is the degree of managerial independence and freedom the former enjoy, O'Hare said. He believes this can be changed: a new chain of control is needed so the ITs come under the remit of the Higher Education Authority rather than the Department of Education and Science.

It's a myth, he said, that there is a hierarchy which puts universities at the top of the pile and the ITs somewhere underneath.

"There is no reason at all why, given the right conditions, universities and institutes of technology should not be recognised equally as centres of excellence - each pre-eminent in its own distinctive field, but not competing with each other on status.

"In the United States, MIT (the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) is every bit as highly regarded as Harvard or Yale. The same is true of the California Institute of Technology.

"Even in India," O'Hare said, "the institutes of technology have not sought to become universities. Instead, they have succeeded in outdoing them and they are more highly regarded than the universities.

"In Britain, the polytechnics became universities only to find that they were now regarded as an inferior class of university and the former status of the British universities was devalued."

O'Hare said ITs should change the thrust of their lobbying "away from seeking university status and seek instead to enhance the role and freedom of the institutes of technology".