IT WAS Juvenal who posed the immortal question: Sed quis custodiet ipsos Custodes? - But who is to guard the guards themselves? Equally one might ask: who will educate the educators themselves?
The answer, in one case at least, appears to be Cork RTC, which recently announced the approval by the National Council for Educational Awards of its MAST course, the master of science in advanced scientific techniques.
The course is part of the ESF/Department of Education funded Training of Trainers Scheme, which aims to update the knowledge and skills of lecturing staff in selected specialised areas or to upgrade their qualifications to bachelor or masters level.
The DIT/RTC branch of the scheme commenced in 1991 but has been considerably revamped since then and now includes four strands: a primary degree strand for those who wish to upgrade skills or change direction; the master's strand, with six programmes on offer, four of them fully validated by the NCEA (in computing, applied engineering technologies, applied science and management in education); a programme in interactive multimedia and design and a number of short courses, mainly in technology and management.
The curriculum in Cork RTC embraces a range of topics from industrial metrology to recombinant DNA, from environmental management to information technology.
Participants are required to complete four taught modules and a research project. Modules, which consist of 75 hours of class work, are offered over one calendar year, generally in three blocks of three to four days' intensive work during holiday periods so that teaching does not clash with the lecturer's own schedule.
Because of time constraints, most course participants will not take more than, one module per year, so it may take up to four or five years to complete the MSc. The benefits, though, are considerable.
"There are obviously some skills that are there all the time," says Dr Eamonn Cashell, head of the department of applied physics and instrumentation at Cork RTC. "But new techniques come on board, and if people have completed their MSc or Phd 10 or 15 years ago, they can choose three or four areas that interest them and get up to the state of the art in them"
Academics are lectured by other academics who are specialists in their fields, a system which requires inter disciplinary and inter collegiate links among 12 different institutions, including a number of colleges in Northern Ireland.
"For the participants, there is also the aspect of meeting colleagues and sharing problems," says Bernard Burke, national co ordinator for the RTC/DIT scheme. "For a long time a lot of colleges were working in isolation from each other - and only recently, with programmes like this, have they been able to come together and realise that they all had the same problems."
One of the biggest in vestments by taxpayers in the third level system is in the area of staff salaries.
"If you want to have a credible institution it's got to have staff who are well versed in technologies and they are changing year by year. If you don't provide for staff development you're allowing that resource to become obsolescent."
