WIT University

gravity1036

Sully wrote: »

Nothing offical. Just from the different courses and people I have met in WIT, a lot of people are against it. Plus, there was very little interest in going to the protest in Dublin last week as people didnt support the cause.

Another lad who was doing an article on this topic went around and asked students and most were against it also.

Clearly by this thread alone, a number of people dont support the cause for variour reasons.

Also clear from this thread is that a great number of contributors don't have ties to the South East nor do some detractors care to understand exactly what the facility means above airing their gripes about classroom quality.

ec18

gravity1036 wrote: »

Also clear from this thread is that a great number of contributors don't have ties to the South East nor do some detractors care to understand exactly what the facility means above airing their gripes about classroom quality.

Surely Classroom is one of the most important aspects of an educational institute? no?

gravity1036

ec18 wrote: »

Surely Classroom is one of the most important aspects of an educational institute? no?

I made a generic response. Lay your gripe on the table and then we'll discuss it. I've been through WIT myself and I've worked with other unis, etc. From my view of the academic quality of these facilities I would say that they are largely equitable in terms of their baseline activities, i.e. providing undergraduate courses.

Outside of this then you will notice a difference because without a university tag you cannot attract big name professors and international academics who already work in universities, why would they take a perceived step backwards? It doesn't make sense.

Granting university status to WIT or establishing a green field site somewhere if needs be, will give a university to the South East that is capable of attracting these big names. Further more it will grant the funding that such institutions need to develop 4th level pursuits and create more and more high-profile research groups and start spinning out companies - something that WIT is already doing by the way, without the university level funding. However, at undergraduate level I challenge anyone to come forward who has completed a primary degree in two different institutes and can realistically compare the two rather than somebody who has progressed from undergrad to postgrad in a different institution or worse still, somebody who is still an undergrad without any benchmark to compare WIT against. The programmes for undergrad and postgrad are very different and largely incomparable as postgrads get far more support and direct supervision due to the tiny numbers in comparison to classes of students.

WIT is already a fine and high-performing institute as has been independently testified to by international experts. Additional funding, the university badge and all that goes with it will see it compete on the same stage as other current universities as long as it is given the time to mature, just as the others were given time. We can't compare apples with oranges as I keep saying.

ec18

I have no gripes....merely an opinion that i feel is valid

Sully

christophicus wrote: »

In all fairness it was not advertised very well in the college at all. The only way I found out about it was by checking the WIT section of boards.ie. Also there was only around 2 or 3 days notice which was not the best to say the least.

Blame your class rep. All reps were informed and were asked to tell the students. Also the SU went to a lot (not all) classes.

But yes, 2 days notice was the colleges fault!

merlante

ec18 wrote: »

The SE has roughly 450K people I may be wrong but the population of Ireland is in or around 4.5 Million. So 10% of the people support this and thats presuming that EVERYONE in the SE supports the cause. But the reality of it is that not everybody supports it. I'm not saying that everyone outside the SE doesn't support it, but I doubt many people outside the SE are interested. It's a regional issue and "Hot" topic...With Bertie's announcement it has faded even more into the background then it already was

The SE is closer to 11% of the population. You musn't assume that there are no people outside the SE in favour of it. There are a lot of SE ex-pats living in Dublin and in other regions -- precisely because they had to leave to go to university, and they didn't/couldn't come back. The follow-on effects of not having a university in the region, i.e. lesser investment, lesser FDI, etc., have led to 80% of all graduates from the region, leaving the region to get jobs. That's horrific if you think about it.

gravity1036

Sully wrote: »

Blame your class rep. All reps were informed and were asked to tell the students. Also the SU went to a lot (not all) classes.

But yes, 2 days notice was the colleges fault!

Short notice alright but in fairness they did give ye a free bus up and down. All the students had to do was turn up in the morning at 0830h.

Sully

gravity1036 wrote: »

Short notice alright but in fairness they did give ye a free bus up and down. All the students had to do was turn up in the morning at 0830h.

And free carvery lunch and dinner in the Dome (plus three drinks)

gravity1036

Sully wrote: »

And free carvery lunch and dinner in the Dome (plus three drinks)

What more could a campaigner want! Should have went back to college myself for the day.

DamoDLK

I went to WIT in 2003 for 4 years,(college st) they had been telling us since we joined that we'd be finishing in a University, but the truth be told, most of us didn't really feel too bothered. I'm not in favour of all the other IT's jumping on the university band wagon (even Dundalk!!!), I reckon University of the SE ought to exist.

Sully

I had to laugh. Was in one of the IT rooms and a lot of the PCs were broken. Took note to report to the Comp Services and one randomer in the class laughed and said "And they want to get University status!". Obviously a weak point, but funny to see some students reasons for being against it!

gravity1036

Sully wrote: »

I had to laugh. Was in one of the IT rooms and a lot of the PCs were broken. Took note to report to the Comp Services and one randomer in the class laughed and said "And they want to get University status!". Obviously a weak point, but funny to see some students reasons for being against it!

Indeed it is funny, nay, disturbing to see the nonsense rhetoric that some will advertise as a reason not to give university status. Even more disturbing is the propagation of such nonsense like Chinese Whispers.

merlante

Sully wrote: »

I had to laugh. Was in one of the IT rooms and a lot of the PCs were broken. Took note to report to the Comp Services and one randomer in the class laughed and said "And they want to get University status!". Obviously a weak point, but funny to see some students reasons for being against it!

According to a friend of mine, Trinity has, or had until quite recently, ancient chemistry labs that were poorly kitted out and run very badly.

Now if that were the case in the WIT, students might cynically come out with something like "the state of these labs, and 'they' want this place to be a university?" (Note the emphasis on the 'they', as if it has nothing to do with them.)

But because it's a university, and a university that is not short of self-confidence at that, they probably just assume that their chemistry labs are the norm, and they must be worse in other colleges. Or that their other facilities more than make up for it, or whatever.

The point is perspective. People see that the WIT is in contention for university status, and so they comment on whether or not it is there or not, and certain problems are brought up to explain why it is not yet there; but in the universities, where similar problems exist (or they are solved by superior funding levels), the question of whether the university deserves university status never arises.

Student points of view are valid to an extent, but unless they have experiences of a number of institutes, they exist in a vacuum because the students have no objective reference point to rate their college against. That's why people like Dr. Port are important, not just because they are experts but because they've seen a lot of colleges on a lot of different levels.

Sully

I see Brian Hayes, TD for Fine Gael put a lot of pressure on Mary Hanafin to make up her mind. He gave her a good grilling in the Dail about it and demanded she make a decision. He said the report she requested was simply used to get her through the General Election and she had said a decision was due in a matter of weeks back in Febuary and to get of the fence and make a decision. He also pointed out about a "spat" between herself and cullen in some parlimentary meeting last month also.

She made little or no comment, but had a stupid grin on her face. She refused to say if she supported it or not also but said the deicison would be based on Waterford and the nation as a whole, not just WIT & the South East.

Bards

She must recognise that the S.E is part of Ireland and not some distant land.

gravity1036

It was a great couple of questions from Hayes. Hanafin delivered the template response to the initial question, the same template that we have all been hearing for an age now and then Hayes hit her with a few specific questions. Watching the video stream of it, she looked a little unsettled by it in contrast to her staunch stone-faced reading of the template response.

I don't think that FF were expecting such an issue to be made out of this by the opposition but in the past month we've seen questions from Martin Mansergh, a press release from Brian Hayes and yesterday some stern questioning from Brian Hayes. It's great to see pressure being put on the government about this issue. If you read the transcript of the questions (http://tinyurl.com/4pzyvh) you'll see that Brendan Howlin as Ceann Comhairle adds to Brian's question about the establishment of a university in the South East that "It is a very important question" and a comment from Rauirí Quinn in response to Brian's question of whether a decision would be made before the Summer, he said, "The Deputy has got to be joking." - an interjection of sarcasm to suggest that more delays were imminent I think that the South East looks to have the support of FG and Labour on this one and given the recent fallout from the Bertie debacle that's enough to turn an election if FF don't watch themselves.

mofoghlu

Essexboy wrote: »

An institution without a Humanities Department cannot be regarded as a university. WIT and other ITs want to be called "university" because of academic snobbery :mad:

Waterford IT has a School of Humanities made up of three departments

c.f. http://www.wit.ie/SchoolsDepartments

School of Humanities

* Department of Applied Arts
* Department of Creative & Performing Arts
* Department of Languages, Tourism & Hospitality

Sully

mofoghlu wrote: »

Waterford IT has a School of Humanities made up of three departments

c.f. http://www.wit.ie/SchoolsDepartments

School of Humanities

* Department of Applied Arts
* Department of Creative & Performing Arts
* Department of Languages, Tourism & Hospitality

I think its supposed to be the worst school in the WIT and is currently being re-built from the ground up. I do believe it even had no head of school for a good period of time to.

blanko

MIT is a university, one with an endowment of almost €10bn and a current student body of 10,000 people. It recruits the best students globally. It is not a good reference example for a future WIT.

Despite what Scully says, the School of Humanities offers some very good programmes and has some of the best and newest facilities in the institute. Like all institutions there are personality clashes (although nothing like stuff that went on in the recent past in UCC).

The university application is not about snobbery- it is about money, although perhaps it is about snobbery for those wishing to refuse university status. To properly serve its region WIT needs more resources, buildings, research funding and more staff. End the academic apartheid in Ireland now.

mofoghlu

Sully wrote: »

I think its supposed to be the worst school in the WIT and is currently being re-built from the ground up. I do believe it even had no head of school for a good period of time to.

I think you'll find some really excellent staff, undergraduate courses, postgraduate courses and research activities in the school - I know of such examples of all three. Schools are quite large and complex things, and are made up of many staff, and so it is very dangerous to make generalisations about entire schools, especially based on informal feedback about or from a few people.

You are not correct in saying it had no Head of School for any period of time, it has has had the same head of school for well over 10 years.

Sully

mofoghlu wrote: »

I think you'll find some really excellent staff, undergraduate courses, postgraduate courses and research activities in the school - I know of such examples of all three. Schools are quite large and complex things, and are made up of many staff, and so it is very dangerous to make generalisations about entire schools, especially based on informal feedback about or from a few people.

You are not correct in saying it had no Head of School for any period of time, it has has had the same head of school for well over 10 years.

Maybe im thinking of some other department. I could of sworn it was Humanities in College St. Campus.

Oh and I was getting the feedback from those representing students in College St. But, it seems I got the wrong department from what you said so my apologies about that!

blanko

Batt O’Keeffe in Education. An act of political violence against the South East, Michael Martin took the IoT differential away from Waterford back in 1998, which was the first step towards university status, and the first big knock back. Another Cork man does not bode well.

Daysha

A former Cork IT lecturer.....not really the best of news is it?

road_high

blanko wrote: »

Batt O’Keeffe in Education. An act of political violence against the South East, Michael Martin took the IoT differential away from Waterford back in 1998, which was the first step towards university status, and the first big knock back. Another Cork man does not bode well.

Ridiculous, hot the hell is Batt O'Keeffe anyhow. Didn't like Hanifan burleast she had some degree of competence.

fricatus

This whole resignation by Bertie and then Cowen's reshuffle is a bad thing for the university campaign. We thought we had it bad with Mary Hanafin in Education, but at least you got the impression Bertie was at least sympathetic.

Anyone got any ideas what Cowen's views on the situation are? And are we unfairly stereotyping Batt* O'Keeffe just because he's a Corkman and a former CIT lecturer?

* What kind of a fcuking name is Batt anyway?

Paddy@CIRL

Sully wrote: »

Maybe im thinking of some other department. I could of sworn it was Humanities in College St. Campus.

You were probably right Sully but I won't go into any details, as any time I do online, I get little smart remarks passed at me by lecturers shortly afterwards ...

Roanmore

fricatus wrote: »

" but at least you got the impression Bertie was at least sympathetic. QUOTE]

Ah yes, good old Bertie was everybody'd friend. If he wanted a University for Waterford he would have made it happen. He was always great for giving the impression he was on your side publicly but privately was a different matter. Just ask albert reynolds

Sully

Paddy@CIRL wrote: »

You were probably right Sully but I won't go into any details, as any time I do online, I get little smart remarks passed at me by lecturers shortly afterwards ...

I checked after. I had the department name correct. I was informed that the head of the department had resigned for a while but is back in place now to re-build it. I had heard storys like that before in Students Unions meetings so it all fits into place now.

invincibleirish

mfitzy wrote: »

Ridiculous, hot the hell is Batt O'Keeffe anyhow. Didn't like Hanifan burleast she had some degree of competence.

Wow,all that just because Batt O Keefe is *assumed* to not be in favour of your cause.

mad man

invincibleirish wrote: »

Wow,all that just because Batt O Keefe is *assumed* to not be in favour of your cause.

Wow! Look who just dropped in:rolleyes: