Universities are `Europe's mendicants'

Mention funding to Dr Seamus Smyth, president of NUI Maynooth, and he emits a kind of involuntary groan. The pursuit of private-sector funding for third-level institutions has now become one of the inescapable burdens of leadership in the sector. In a memorable phrase, Smyth once said that university presidents were becoming "the mendicants of Europe".

In the past, Maynooth had difficulties in meeting the requirement that 5 per cent of its funding should come from private sources. Smyth says Maynooth's new independent, autonomous university status should help the college's fundraising activities, but he points out that all the universities are essentially competing with each other for private-sector funding.

NUI Maynooth is in the process of establishing an independent fundraising foundation, with the goal of raising £5 million by the end of the century. The college is building a £9.5 million science building, phase two of its £20 million investment in science. About one-quarter of the £9.5 million is coming from money garnered by the university from various sources. On the college's building list for the future are £3 million worth of additional computer-science facilities - particularly for the new degree programme in software engineering, which starts next October and will take in 80 new students each year. New lecture halls and athletic and sporting facilities are also a priority. Phase 2 of the library development is also planned for the next decade.

On the academic side, a new diploma in applied physics has come on stream and there is ongoing development of finance courses. "Fundamentally, what I want to do is create a greater sense of interdisciplinary courses, at postgraduate and undergraduate level," Smyth says. "I think we will produce some interesting stuff there, particularly in the social sciences. Adult education and lifelong learning will also be part of that."

This year, Maynooth has also opened a pilot Outreach centre in Kilkenny, with 50 students taking a BA in local and community studies, as part of its commitment to adult and continuing education. There will be televisual link-ups between Kilkenny and the Maynooth campus.