THE Dublin Institute of Technology is currently in the middle of a major transition in terms of both structure and identity. This year, after a planning and consultative process which began in 1993, the Institute has moved from a college-based to a faculty-based structure with each faculty having its own director.

But, at least as important to the DIT is its progress towards degree-awarding status, a status it believes it may be very close to achieving. For as the DIT continues to grow, the question of autonomy has assumed ever-increasing significance.

The origins of the institute date back more than 100 years, when a technical school was built on the site now occupied by DIT Kevin Street. Now the DIT has 10 000 full-time students studying 85 programmes from certificate to postdoctoral level in addition to 8,000 part-time students and 2,000 apprentices. This is the largest single enrolment of any third-level college in the country, yet the DIT has perhaps suffered in the past from a public perception of it as having a somewhat fragmented identity.

Spread over six colleges, three on the northside of the city (Bolton Street, Cathal Brugha Street and Mountjoy Square) and three on the southside (Kevin Street, Aungier Street and Adelaide Road), with administrative offices in Fitzwilliam Square, explaining the nature of the DIT to a visitor is a little like explaining the idea of Three Persons in One God without the aid of a shamrock.

"The first thing I discovered very quickly when I became president was that it wasn't unusual in those days for people to deliver a blank expression when you asked them about the DIT," says Dr Brendan Goldsmith, who has been president of the DIT since 1993. "Then you would mention Rathmines or Kevin Street and their eyes would light up and they'd say: "Oh, I know that."

The DIT has been operating as an independent entity with its own governing since 1993, when the DIT Act 1992 came into force.

"Since the DIT became a single, integrated structure the old college-based system seemed inappropriate," says Goldsmith. "I think the faculty structure will bring a closer sense of integration to the institute. It will also enable us to develop in a more coherent way than heretofore."

Under the old structure, there was an element of competition between individual colleges as well as what Goldsmith describes as "duplications, overlap and not the most efficient use of resources".

Both the report by the Institute of Public Administration and the report by the DIT's governing body recommended a move towards a faculty-based structure and both, by coincidence, also decided on six faculties as the optimum amount.

The initial framework has now been established (see panel) but Goldsmith is anxious that the faculty structure should not be conceived as cast in stone. Its implementation, the courses covered by each faculty and the eventual location of staff are all open for discussion, he stresses.

But at least as important to the DIT is its progress towards degree-awarding status, a power which it has been seeking since it became an independent entity with its own governing body in 1993.

Its degrees have been awarded by the University of Dublin (TCD) since the I970s, under an agreement with the City of Dublin VEC but the power to award its own degrees is something towards which the DIT has always been moving.

The need to award its own degrees is also a result of the DIT's sustained growth. While Goldsmith makes the point that TCD has been consistently helpful, the DIT's student numbers now exceed TCD's own. "I think it's the mark of maturity of an institution that it stands over its own awards," says Goldsmith.

"I think you can't be a really serious premier degree player if you can't make your own awards. The DIT has been in this game for a very long time, making its own awards at certificate and diploma level. Basically, it's a natural progression."

The most obvious step in this process began in April of this year, when the Higher Education Authority's Quality Review Team began its visits, although like an iceberg the main bulk of the DIT's efforts in this area lay below the surface.

THE HEA has passed the results of the review team's report on to the Department of Education where, according to a spokesperson, it is under consideration.

The review is positive and the extension of degree-awarding status, both undergraduate and postgraduate, has been recommended for the DIT, although the team recommended that two year's notice should be given to the CAO. In addition, the proposal to extend such powers would have to go before both houses of the Oireachtas. Goldsmith describes the team's endorsement as "quite unambiguous".

The question of university status for the DIT might then arise, although this is likely to remain some way down the road.

Goldsmith's more immediate concern is to seek greater autonomy for the institute, in line with the recommendations of the review team and certain provisions of the Universities Bill, published during the summer, which gives greater autonomy to most of the universities and which the review team recommended should be examined in relation to the DIT.

"We would see it as very desirable to have that degree of autonomy extended to the DIT," he says.

In the end, he believes the DIT's applied, multi-level programmes give it a strength and flexibility which third-level institutions need in the modern age. In turn, this implies a more modular-based approach to studies, although he says modularisation and the different if related, question of semesterisation requires more discussion.

"I see the DIT as the model of what a modern university should be in the sense that it's very different from the more traditional universities in what it does," says Goldsmith. "I would say the DIT is a rather unique institution in Ireland, and possibly even in the world context."