To Be Honest: Institutes of technology have a place in Irish education, but it’s not as third-rate universities

I teach at an institute of technology, and I have no desire to become a university lecturer. Nor, as far as I’m aware, do any of my colleagues.

We’ve been told that before they can be designated as technological universities, the IoTs must increase the proportion of teaching staff with PhDs.

If you think that’s a reasonable requirement you might also expect senior academics in the sector to be required to have a record of published research. If so, you would be wrong.

Most senior academics at IoTs neither teach nor research. As heads of department and heads of school they are often responsible for managing the delivery of subjects outside their area of expertise.

They are best described as academic administrators, but if they were to be designated as such they might be confused with the school administrators.

But to return to the issue of PhDs. The assumption that it’s in the best interests of students that more of their lecturers have PhDs is debatable. In general, IoT students are not as academically gifted as their university counterparts. Do students pursuing a level 6 certificate or a level 7 ordinary degree (the majority) require the expertise of someone who typically spent three years pursuing a level 8 course at a university followed by another five years researching a specialist topic for a PhD?

Might they benefit more from being taught by people who spent less time in academia and more time in industry?

After completing a diploma at an IoT I worked for a year, going on to do a bachelor’s degree at university. After graduating I worked for two years before doing a master’s. Before I was appointed to my present position I spent five years in academia and five years in industry, in Ireland and abroad. People with backgrounds similar to my own, which is most existing IoT staff, are better able to understand the fears and aspirations of IoT students and better placed to understand what industry requires of them.

The brightest students need to be challenged by the brightest scholars, but most of the brightest students are in the universities, where they belong. As for those studying outside the university sector, surely it’s not asking too much that the IoTs and the universities work together to establish formal transfer mechanisms.

It's unfortunate that comments from university academics are often met with charges of elitism by those in the IoT sector, but then what can we expect when you have a university president arguing in The Irish Times that the IoTs should stick to their "diploma" courses? If only such commentators acknowledged the social value of the IOTs and their considerable contribution to the economy, they would not be at risk of becoming third-rate universities.

This column gives a voice to people within education. education@irishtimes.com