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ATHLONE INSTITUTE OF Technology and Limerick Institute of Technology are seeking to join together to form a new Technological University (TU) for the region.
The institutions say the intention is to create “a new type of networked university with the River Shannon forming its spine”.
The two campuses are about 90 minutes driving distance apart.
The move comes following last year’s Technological Universities Act which made it possible for two or more ITs to come together to seek technological university status.
The new law provides for this to happen subject to eligibility criteria and an assessment by an international advisory panel.
The governing bodies of both AIT and LIT met last week and formed a new consortium that will work towards the goal of governing the new TU.
Both institutions jointly applied for funding earlier this year to commence work on the TU consortium and will ultimately apply to the Minister for Education for TU status.
Athlone IT said it would create “a new unique, disruptive technological university for the for the midlands and mid-west regions”.
In a statement today, President of LIT Professor Vincent Cunnane said the move puts both institutions on the course to be designated as a technological university.
“LIT and AIT’s application is aimed at developing a new unique university with a strengthened regional focus that will benefit our staff, our students and the communities we serve,” he said.
Our intention is to build a new type of networked university with the River Shannon forming its spine. We will enhance our regional focus and our collaboration with partners here in the mid-west.
Cunnane added that the location of the technical university across the two campuses will make it accessible to “a large portion of the country’s population”.
Last year, Ireland got its first ever technological university after a merger between DIT and institutes of technology in Tallaght and Blanchardstown.
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Really saddened to see AIT and LIT buy into the political Con job that is the TU process.A TU isnt a university, all it is is the opportunity for the local politicians to say that the brought a university to their area. This was illustrated by the international panel review of the CIT ITtrlee application where it said the institutes had no vision or practical plan how to become a TU. The whole merger approach for the designation to be upgraded to TU wasnt a educational issue rather a cost cutting approach for the government where they can get rid of duplicate depts.
And look at the existing mergers, WIT and ITcarlow are at each other throats for the last 5 years and Waterford is militantly against having to merge with Carlow and CIT have the millstone of the basket-case ITtralee forced on to them .Tralee isn’t financially viable anymore and had to be bailed out a month ago to the tune of 5 million by the government to keep the doors open.But CIT is being forced to merge with them
In an age of massive under funding of third level by this government the TUs are an emperor with no clothes and nobody in government has thought through the practical issues of merging these institutes. The whole process has no actual substance or plan behind it but nobody in third level management has the courage to call them out. How are two campuses that are so far apart like LIT and AIT supposed to function efficiently.Oh and by the way this whole IT merger to become a TU idea goes back to Phil Hogan who want ITcarlow to be upgraded in his constituency but they weren’t big enough so he pushed for the merger with Waterford even though WIT had been looking for university status on their own for the last 20 years
@Robert Woodward: An educated and we’ll thought out argument. Props to you Robert.
@Robert Woodward: Waterford is against merging with Carlow as they have been promised a university in Waterford for nearly 40 years now.carlow politicians have got a whole new campus built spending millions on it and have not much weight in providing big courses available,now they want to tie Waterford into their new campus even though it’s only half the size of wit and for cit to be the main driver in the south east,Waterford is getting p!ssed on with a number of huge issues with Fine Gael the last number of years
We should be very careful about inaugurating so-called “technological universities”. The term “technological university” is a contradiction in itself, because a university is supposed to be what the name suggests: all-encompassing. A university (just like the seven existing ones before DIT was renamed ‘Technological University, Dublin’) encompasses all of the disciplines of academia, from Medicine to the Arts and Humanities, from Engineering to Science and from Law to Information Technology, and so on). A glorified institute of technology cannot fulfil this criteria. Name changes cannot suffice to bridge the gap. An institute of technology is not a university just because one calls it a university.
@J. Reid: TU Dublin offers medicine?
What’s a disruptive technological university
: I cannot say about other Tus but both LIT and AIT are heavily involved in research with many separate and joint government-funded and european-funded projects. We bring innovation to this country and help out to many small and medium businesses. HOwever Lack of University status deprives us from Government research funding that is available to universities. This in turn hampers base research, himber of postgraduate students, publication, etc.
As much as you want to talk about politics, I believe this will help Irish ITs to raise their research outputs and, as a result, increase in EU funding, development of the local talent to a higher standard and increase in foreign investment.
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