At a time when most colleges have been trying to cope with a growing student population, Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology has faced the opposite problem: falling numbers.
Intense competition with other colleges caused student numbers to drop by 400 between 2009 and 2013.
It has also grappled with holding on to its existing students: recent figures show more than a quarter of first years failed to progress to the second year of their higher degree course.
Against a backdrop of falling State funding, the college tried to expand its offering to compete with others, but ended up spreading itself too thinly. It ran up accumulated deficits of €6 million in the process.
Dr Fergal Barry, who took over as GMIT's president last October, said: "There is no issue about our academic quality, but we have been working on a number of actions to improve our institutional performance. I'm glad to say they are already showing results."
Turnaround
The turnaround has come too late, however, for the first series of performance assessments carried out by the
Higher Education Authority
(HEA) into all third-level institutions.
Each year Ireland invests €2 billion in higher education.Yet we have had no clear picture of how our colleges and universities are performing or if they have the right strategic focus.
We are finally beginning to get answers to some of those questions. The HEA this week published the first outcomes of its assessment process.
The outcomes, broadly speaking, are encouraging. All our universities and 10 other colleges and institutes of technology have demonstrated an “excellent ability” to meet skills needs and benchmark themselves against their peers.
A further six were deemed to have performed in a satisfactory manner but had areas of weakness to address.
Three institutions, which did not meet the agreed performance level, now face a potential funding penalty.
GMIT, Dundalk Institute of Technology and the National College of Art and Design in Dublin have been warned they risk losing €1 million in public money unless they tackle poor performance.
The institutions can avoid financial penalties by submitting a revised plan over the coming weeks on how they intend to deal with the shortcomings.
At a time when our third-level system is creaking, these annual performance outcomes are likely to provide a confidence boost to everyone who wants to maximise the potential of our higher education institutions. But for colleges who are in a vulnerable financial situation, the withholding of funding provides a sharp reminder of the need to act strategically, to prioritise and to differentiate their offering.
Targets
Dr Fergal Barry has taken the HEA’s criticism on the chin. In GMIT’s case the authority found it has failed to reach performance targets on student numbers and, more broadly, was trying to do too much with too little.GMIT has offered a series of new higher degree courses in areas such as science and sport, as well as design.
The results seem to be bearing fruit: latest CAO preferences show a 12 per cent rise in the number of students choosing to undertake a GMIT course.
It is also focusing on tackling the problem of high drop-out rates which have posed a particular problem in courses with a maths element such as engineering and business.
Over the next three years it is planning to spend €3.5 million in providing all the tuition, support and facilities needed to help students succeed in their chosen programme.
The problem is complex, says Dr Barry. A major challenge is the fact the proportion of students heading to third level in Galway and Mayo is among the highest in the country. This means a higher proportion of students with lower abilities can find themselves struggling.
