A decision on whether the DIT will be awarded university status is expected to be made within the next few weeks. If the review group recommends that the DIT merits university status, the implications are enormous. DIT's becoming a university will certainly herald the end of the binary third-level system in this country. Other institutes of technology will be anxious to follow suit.
Given the successes of the former RTC sector since it was established back in the Seventies, and the role it has played in the country's economic development - we might not have had such a Celtic tiger success without it - you'd have to wonder why some of the colleges are so keen to fly the coop. The push by some ITs for university status smacks of insecurity. It's akin to the rich, self-made man or woman apeing the aristocracy and hankering after titles.
You'd have to question, too, the vision of some of the people within the sector, who are lobbying for what they perceive as an upgrade. Why can't they continue to work within their areas to achieve excellence in all aspects of IT life?
The universities are great and valuable institutions, but how many do we need? We can't all be academics, nor should we want to be. It's very hard to halt the stampede for university places among young people and encourage them to take up places in the ITs which, in many cases, lead to almost guaranteed jobs, when men at the top - and they are mostly men - are rushing to defect.
If there are poor souls in the ITs who have laboured away for years in a sector which they perceive as second rate, then they shouldn't be there at all. They should move over and allow people with vision, who believe in the concept of a binary system and the value of vocational, skills-based education, to take their places.
The people hankering after university status are missing a valuable point. Our recent research on how the human brain works is showing that people have different types of intelligences and that our brains work and process information in different ways. These findings have huge implications for teaching and learning. The ITs which offer a wide range of courses - apprenticeships, certificate, diploma and degree - are in an ideal position to develop programmes based on this new thinking.
Fortunately, most of the ITs are happy with their new designations and appreciate the strengths of the sector. However, awarding university status to some institutions in the sector will send out an unfortunate message: that the rest of the colleges are in some way inferior.
This would be grossly unfair. Of course, the ITs are different to the universities. Why shouldn't they be and why can't we all celebrate that difference?
