Sir, – I support Dr Greg Foley’s request (April 15th) that he should be allowed question the proposal that IoTs are deserving of university status without having to be called elitist and caricatured as a snob. I am also staggered that there has not been an avalanche of rebuttals of his argument from those leading that upgrading campaign. Dr Foley’s argument is that since students in IoTs have on average 300 points, they are not properly capable of taking honours (level 8) degrees and thus an institute could not conceivably be a university.
Apart from the fact that a focus on output instead of input would be a more accurate indicator of whether the institutes’ students are up to scratch; and leaving aside the larger question of whether the university brand would be damaged by the IoTs’ inclusion, this claim that IoT students are simply not able for level 8 degrees cannot go unchallenged.
Surely there is someone in the management stream of the IoT sector (the stream that is spearheading this upgrading campaign) who will provide evidence to counter this open denigration of the IoT product? It’s not as though Dr Foley is merely talking about a future scenario, as IoTs have been running honours degrees for yonks.
Can we have some articulate leadership and communication on this issue? – Yours, etc,
JUNE O’ REILLY,
Lecturer in Communication,
Cork Institute of
Technology, Cork.
Sir, – I disagree with Dr Greg Foley’s letter (April 15th). With all of his experience, Dr Foley has failed to realise that the CAO points system comes down to merely supply and demand and is not an indicator to the quality of the education received or to the work ethic of every student on that course.
Although a student may gain entry to an institute, that is not to say he or she will exit the institute with a qualification, – Yours, etc,
DAVID BARRY,
Waterford Institute of
Technology Student,
Ballydehob, Cork.