Competition between third-level institutions is hotting up. Eleven of them have been put on the shortlist for the first cycle of the £180 million "Programme for Research in Third Level Institutions 1999-2001", which was launched last November.

The shortlisted colleges are Athlone IT, DCU, DIT, Carlow IT, NUI Galway, NUI Maynooth, RCSI, TCD, UCC, UCD and UL. According to the HEA, 23 institutions submitted research proposals totalling £250 million. The shortlisted proposals amount to £175 million on the capital side. However, only £100 million of capital funding and £22 million current funding will be allocated in the first cycle. Some tough decisions on which projects to reject will have to be made by the international assessment panel.

According to John Hayden, the HEA's chief executive, the colleges were invited to submit proposals in a standard format.

"They were asked to include their strategies for the development of research and the proposal they were making in that regard," he explains. The proposals were then sent to members of the assessment panel, which consists of distinguished scholars in the sciences and humanities. The panel met recently in Dublin and reviewed the applications.

The shortlisted group is now being invited to submit developed proposals by Friday, June 11th. According to Hayden, final decisions will be made at the end of July.

The panel will award marks for strategy, contribution to teaching and for the quality of the research project. Shortlisted colleges will also be required to submit detailed costings.

There is, however, some concern in the colleges that decisions on the £22 million current expenditure are to be made as late as July.

"Proposals on the current side involve a lot of graduate students," says Professor John Hegarty, TCD's dean of research. "July will be too late to find students for October. "The institutions were hoping to get a decision on that aspect much earlier." Colleges are also concerned that the assessment panel still has a long way to go in its deliberations and that a number of the shortlisted universities and ITs will have to be weeded out.

It had been hoped that the shortlist would represent almost a fait accompli - that the shortlisted institutions would need to make only minor improvements to their applications in order to receive funding.

The competitive nature of the process has taken many people by surprise. Institutions have been extremely tight-lipped about their applications.

"The competitive factor has taken over and the institutions have entrenched themselves," one source says. "The HEA had stated that it would like to see collaboration, but there has been no incentive to do so." All the signs are that this competitive element is set to continue into the final phase of the first cycle. Being dropped from the shortlist will be a major embarrassment for any of the competing institutions.

Last year, in a similar research funding scheme, DCU and UCD both failed to secure money, while Athlone and Carlow ITs were successful. Whether such fierce competition is desirable is debatable. It is argued, however, that competition ensures high quality proposals.

Indeed, some of the proposals are said to be "superb", E&L has learned.