WIT University

Won't being given an increased status and increased funding help them solve these problems? I'd think it wouldn't happen overnight either, but they would be told "You will have university status in 3 years" or whatever, so it isn't so much the condition it is in now, but what it will be like when the time comes.

fricatus wrote: »

ec18, I'm assuming you've never worked in any sort of organisation that's undergoing rapid change if you're thinking like that.

My experience in the work environment (I'm in IT) is that decisions are not made based on whether absolutely all the little elements necessary are in place. Generally a decision on which team will run a project or what location a service will be set up in, is determined by factors like cost, which services can afford to be dropped to make way for the new, how easy it will be to hire loads of new staff, that kind of thing. Very rarely does any analysis of the details come into it. That's left to the implementors, and it's usually done last and in a hurry. We recently moved 50 people into a building that had no parking, hot water, canteen, waste disposal, etc.

And let me tell you: if we had waited for all those things to be put in place, we'd still be waiting, and the knock-on effects on our customers (who are the ones who pay our salaries) would have become intolerable and would have hit our corporate image hard.

If we wait for perfect parking, canteen, IT services, trees etc., we'll never have a university. Those are small logistical matters in the context of the overall project, and while they should be tackled urgently, their absence should not be left get in the way of an upgrade of WIT.

I'm sure the surronding residents of WIT feel the same as you as well....we are not talking about a private company that is scared of losing profits and disappointing customers. It's a government institution that is providing a serviceand as such is probably operating at a loss but either way the lecturers get paid. A simple question can everybody arguing that WIT needs to be upgraded now honestly say that the COURSES offered and taught if it gets upgraded will be vastly superior to the ones offered now?

Waterford needs a university.
When Waterford gets a university, the other universities will suffer from lower intakes.
This will hit Galway and Limerick because of their overlapping cachement area.
It may also affect Cork to a greater extent.

No wonder the scum in Dublin don't want to give Waterford a university.

Regards...jmcc

First off Sully, I won't make things personal, but this is worth getting upset about. It is vitally important for the institute's future, the city and region that the WIT gets upgraded. This decision may even play a big part in the lives of those who are posting here, whether they realise it or not. We have an opportunity, that is still on the table, that may not come back again any time soon.

There have been a lot of posts to the effect that the WIT is limited in such and such a way, and therefore it is unready to be upgraded. Fricatus hit the nail on the head: you make a strategic decision, and then you follow up. You don't begin by aimlessly ticking a thousand little boxes until you wake up one day and find that the names have changed on all the signs. That is not the way it works in business or in the public sector.

Waterford and the south east require a university as soon as possible in order to compete with the other regions and for all of the other reasons that have been given. The case would be a compelling one whether there was a WIT to upgrade or a hole in the ground. Now it just so happens that we have an IT, which, despite having the scope and funding on an IT, is functioning somewhere between an IT and a university. We have met the government more than half way already.

The way you make it perform as a university is by upgrading it. There are a huge number of things that will improve overnight. The status of university will buy increased student numbers, more competition for staff positions, easier access to research funding, more international prestige, etc., etc. There are other things that the status change will not accomplish; these will have to be ironed out in time. But the focus and drive toward a university will likely mean that these issues will also be sorted out efficiently.

What people have to understand is that even if everything was signed off tomorrow, it would take years for the WIT to be upgraded. Years. Easily enough time to fix up any of the fecky little 'problem of the month' issues like the lack of parking, or old computer facilities, or whatever. We need everyone to be pulling in the same direction to make this happen. What we don't need are people coming up with all these extra road blocks, which can easily be sorted down the line whether the decision to upgrade is made or not.

Fricatus is dead right in that the upgrade would drive these improvements, but the improvements, made in isolation over time, will not necessarily drive the upgrade.

Sully wrote: »

Is it ready? I personally don't think so. Will things improve? More money probably means they can offer more services and add more buildings and courses. Will it fix the internal mess ups that are not just a "problem of the month" and "happen to every college, IT or University"? Will several years be the required time to fix out all these problems and prepare itself for the running with the big boys?

I attended a certain university, which was at the time relatively new, and the campus was a building site for the entire time I was there, and people had many complaints about bad administration, bad organisation, certain aspects being a sham, etc., etc., but I'm sure that the students that are there now are attending a college that is 10 times the place it was when I started. (When I started it wasn't too far ahead of the WIT now and maybe behind in a few respects.)

Which do you think is better? To sort the problems while planning an upgrade to university, or to delay an upgrade -- which may not be on the table in the future -- until all the problems are solved.

Which approach do you think is likely to work best politically?

Sully wrote: »

Its a tough one that has people divided...

The divide should be between the people of the south east and the people outside of the south east (with the opposite vested interest). Regardless of how many bad experiences you have had in the WIT, I'm sorry, but the whole region needs the upgrade now for the greater good. There is a lot more at stake than exposing the student body to a period of uncomfortably rapid change. There is a window of opportunity that has to be seized.

And once again, the upgrade will take *years*, it will not happen overnight anyway. The process needs to start now.

|.Murderer.| wrote: »

Many of the current teaching staff are employed on a part time (i.e short term contract) basis which is far from ideal if there's expected to be a consistent level of tuition offered to students. University status would open up more funding and allow the college to attract top class lecturers worthy of tenure rather than post-grads who see lecturing as a means to an end.

Thanks thats the type of answer I wanted not some rant about development in the SE or more research money....simple reason as to why university status wold benefit the students.

@merlante annoying the student body is not the best way to start off being a university
interesting editorial here especially the last part

Nolanger wrote: »

Carlow offers a degree in Computer Games Development - one of the few high profile industries that's under-developed in this country.
And it has a more central location in the South East for the surrounding counties.

Here here change this thread name to Carlow Uni lol...


Carlow is more central and with the new motorway would be rather easily accessible.

Amazotheamazing wrote: »

This thread shows why the regions are so poorly run.

No one has bothered to ask if Ireland, a small country of limited resources, needs another University, but rather, there's outrage that Waterford might slip behind Galway and Limerick. The argument has nothing to do with academic standards and everything to do with parochialism.

The reason nobody has bothered to ask is because the debate has been centred around whether the city/region needs a university. The reason for this, is that you are on a Waterford city board! If this debate were happening on an all-Ireland Education board, it would be an entirely different debate.

Whenever I hear someone from Dublin come out with words such as the 'regions' or 'parochialism' I know I am in for the usual argument about such and such a place not thinking of the greater good, but only their own interests. What you fail to understand is that at every level people are concerned with 'parochial' interests. One parish competes with its neighbour, Waterford competes with Galway, Dublin competes with other capitals, Ireland competes with other countries. Within each context people become very parochial, and to an extent, rightly so.

I don't hear any arguments suggesting that extremely specialist care units in Dublin should be centralised to London so that they might be provided more efficiently. When the IFSC was set up, I doubt anyone asked, "does the British isles *need* another financial services centre?" That would be ridiculous because as a country we have our own legitimate, 'parochial' ambition, and one of the things we demand in particular is equality of service provision with other countries, or regions of countries.

What Waterford and the south east seeks is parity of education provision to the other regions. This is a legitimate ambition of the region. If there is a university in every other populous region and regional capital in Ireland, and Waterford and the south east is the single, obvious exception to what we could loosely call a national strategy, then there would want to be a damn good reason not to establish a university in the south east.

I have heard a lot of arguments that establishing another university in the south east would be (somehow) one too many universities. As if anyone has done any analysis of how many is 'enough', or what the magic number is. The people who are saying this, funnily enough, are vested interests from the university establishment in the other cities who are well aware of what the increased competition would mean for their institution. I have also heard vague talk about needing to centralise our research spend further (world class universities argument), and therefore one more university would somehow be a disaster. The clear solution here would be to establish a university in the south east, and begin to merge universities over time to achieve economies of scale and critical mass without affecting the geographical distribution of university education and research investment.

Amazotheamazing wrote: »

If the Government were to decide tomorrow to give Carlow or Kilkenny a university, suddenly, the argument wouldn't be that the South-East needs a university, but rather that Waterford alone needs a university.

This is total garbage. Universities for populations of a half million people is consistent with what we've been doing in Ireland, and also in the smaller scandinavian countries, which have similar populations, low population densities and somewhat similar urban structures.

There are 460,000 people in the south east, and that figure is growing at almost 10% every 5 years. The West and Midwest, which have universities, are smaller regions.

Amazotheamazing wrote: »

We'd (as in Irish taxpayers) would be better off insisting that the existing universities are brought up to a higher standard, rather than demanding that the Southeast gets a university.

We're Irish tax payers as well. Why does this fact so often escape people making these sort of arguments? 12% of the country live in the south east. Waterford is a gateway in the 'national' spatial strategy. If the region receives parity of educational investment it will be consolidated as a driver of economic growth and will help relieve the pressure on Dublin.

If there needs to be rationalisation in the university sector, and despite how often this is said there has been no real analysis backing this up, rationalisation is university administration (as in merging universities and reducing administration) would be far more beneficial than geographical rationalisation, i.e. chop off the south east and let it die.

You may not be aware that the lack of a university in the south east has numerous negative consequences for the country as a whole, e.g. more people in Waterford city on social welfare than in Galway city, despite Galway being 40% larger; a significantly lower percentage of degree holders in the south east, which is 12% of the national population, and so on. To a certain extent, the government will need to hand feed the south east as a going concern if it cannot stand on its own two feet and actually contribute to the national economy. A university is essential if the south east is to prosper.

Amazotheamazing wrote: »

That's not to knock Waterford, or WIT, but frankly, the question isn't whether Waterford needs a university, after all, it's hard to argue it would be a bad addition to any town/city, but rather does Ireland need another university?

The south east is 'Ireland' too.

Essentially what we could get into here is a centralisation versus decentralisation debate, where I argue for decentralisation because it offers consistent and fair coverage of university education across the country, and you argue centralisation on the basis that more money spread between fewer institutions helps build critical mass and helps Irish universities compete nationally. It's largely, though not entirely, an argument of social equity versus economics. (Although there are economic benefits to the country of establishing a university in the south east, such as the reduced costs to the state (grants) and to the family of displacing students from the south east to other regions for 4 years.)

This argument has not been won, it hasn't even really been argued. The report by independent, UK expert Dr. Port on the application is due out soon. Let's see what he says.

Also, as I said earlier, we need administrative rationalisation not geographic rationalisation.

Amazotheamazing wrote: »

All the arguments made in favour of the university could be applied to Athlone or Letterkenny. The fact is, all the regional cities, Cork, Galway and Limerick, as well as Waterford suffer a brain drain towards Dublin.

Athlone and Letterkenny are small towns situated in sparsely populated regions, whose recent growth is probably already putting severe pressure on infrastructure and whose significance in the national spatial strategy are not so immediate.

Realistically, there will only ever be one more genuine candidate for a new university in Ireland. The other ITs would all try to follow suit, of course, but there is only one IT with the demographic justification for an upgrade.

Besides, if you wanted to be brutal, the correct decision would be to upgrade and invest in the WIT at the expense of NUI Maynooth, which is a smaller institution and of less strategic importance in a national context.

Amazotheamazing wrote: »

A nice, detailed, informative reply that totally misses the point, does Ireland actually need another university? To me, all you've pointed out is that, shock horror, it would be handy for Waterford to have one. Great, but does Ireland (the large green thing that Waterford is part of) actually need one?

I didn't miss the point at all, I just answered the question in terms you aren't bothered considering.

In the context of the south east needing a university, I might equally ask you 'what is so disastrous about 8 universities rather than 7?' (When with 7 universities a large swathe of the country has limited access to university education and suffers with respect to other regions on any socio-economic scale you care to mention.)

It's very convenient for us to miss each other's point when we disagree.