New Degree Courses in ETBs

combat14

Today Simon Harris followed up his December announcement of 14 new degree courses running in ETBs around the country by indicating at this year's TUI conference that these courses would be advertised in July to commence in September...

Does anyone know how likely this is to happen? .. are second level / further education teachers now being promoted to University Lecturers over night? Where are the additional staff to come from? What will their terms and conditions be or will these teachers be treated as yellow pack lecturers? Will the TUI protect ETB teachers elevated to University lecturer status?

What are the registration fees for the new ETB university degree courses? and will there be much demand from prospective students?

Any thoughts welcome to get the discussion going :)

https://m.independent.ie/irish-news/education/this-stops-now-simon-harris-promises-revolutionary-new-training-courses-will-stem-exodus-of-young-nurses-to-uk-42427622.html

https://www.rte.ie/news/education/2023/0411/1376253-tui-conference/

darkmode24

This is a welcome development in further education (the part of it that relates to school graduates and early higher education). I think you need to make a clear distinction between second-level teachers and further education teachers. The link between them is just because FE teachers were lumped into second-level contracts etc. FE is too small to justify its own set of contracts and salary scales etc. It is much simpler to attach then to existing systems.

A lot of the true further education teachers in this part of FE (early university level teaching and subjects as opposed to those drafted in from secondary schools) are already operating at higher education levels (look at most of the colleges in Dublin and a few around the country which offer practical subjects). By that I mean they operate at the first half of a degree (years 1 or 2).

This approach is just looking to mirror that of other countries where you can study in FE colleges and then get advanced entry into HE should you wanna do that.

The TUI has done good things for FE teachers simply because FE teachers are linked with secondary school teachers, so that has been cool. My experience is that the TUI is far from being understanding of what really goes on in fe colleges, and at times have served to perpetuate the schoolishness of the fe sector over the decades. I have professional involvement with a few FE colleges nationwide, and things like the croke park hours are nonsensical in a college context.