The recent embarrassing publicity for UCD's Smurfit Business School could be bad news for the business types who want to succeed Art Cosgrove as Belfield supremo.
Until recently, the academics in Carysfort (where the Smurfit school is based) were the masters of the universe, compared to the old-fashioned boffins down the road in Belfield. How times have changed. The affair of lecturer Gary Santry - the American "doctor" who was not what he appeared to be - has changed everything.
The report on the Santry episode is now being prepared, and with it the possibility of more embarrassment.
Goodbye to all that. After 18 months of agitation the ASTI dispute is finally over - bar the shouting. Charlie Lennon is back in the saddle in Winetavern Street. The days when Bernadine O'Sullivan ran the show seem a hazy memory.
Pat Cahill and four others on the standing committee are still fighting the good fight. They still have widespread support among the grassroots and should not be underestimated. If nothing else, they will continue to ask awkward questions - like whatever happened to the famous Rossnowlagh report on internal union strife?
Remember Feargus Denman, the whiz-kid who topped the bill in the Leaving Cert with nine A1s? Feargus has been very complimentary about his former alma mater, Maynooth Post-Primary School, run by renowned principal, Sean Ashe. But who will grab the young genius at third level? Will it be the local NUI Maynooth (where his father lectures) or some fancy-dan Oxbridge college? With Feargus on a gap year, wily Maynooth supremo Seamus Smyth is still waiting by the telephone.
Is there a town or hamlet in Ireland which does not want a university? Each week our fine local press tells us of another county or town which says it wants a university - or at least part of one - nearby.
This time there are plans, according to the Donegal News, to base a university (or an offshoot of one) in the small town of Gweedore, Co Donegal. TP has holidayed there and loves the beaches, but he wonders about this obsession with having universities scattered all over the country.
In this case, NUI Galway and Queen's University Belfast are said to be planning to open a joint centre to offer courses to the locals through Irish. All very laudable, but TP wonders if there much demand for such developments and, more crucially, if the taxpayer should continue to stump up for them? Answers on a postcard, as gaeilge please.
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