Staff morale at University College Dublin is at its lowest point in a quarter of a century, according to an unofficial survey which reports responses from about 60 of the college's 900 full-time academic staff.
However, a spokesman for UCD has played down the importance of the survey and insisted that the atmosphere at the college is very upbeat.
The survey, organised by Dr Gerard Casey, a member of the UCD governing authority, reports growing opposition among staff to restructuring which has seen the number of faculties and departments halved.
There have been tensions in UCD since the president Dr Hugh Brady, introduced new structures last year. Under the Brady plan, the number of faculties has been cut from 11 to five colleges. More than 100 separate academic departments have been replaced or consolidated into about 35 schools.
The survey conducted among academic staff is an unofficial one. Academics make their contributions anonymously.
In the College Tribune newspaper, Tom Garvin of UCD's politics department stressed that the survey was not a scientific one and was more likely to attract negative comment.
But he said: "There is a lot of unease. I think there is too much leadership. . . highly authoritarian leadership that's highly remote from the lectures and the professors."
It is understood that a proposal to officially survey the views of staff was rejected at a meeting of the UCD governing authority late last year. Since then, however about 60 responses have been received by the survey conducted by Dr Casey.
A UCD spokesman said Dr Brady had made himself available to a huge number of staff who were in any way concerned about the changes over the past year.
Under the restructuring, departments are run by one school with one administrative structure and one budget. In practice, individual departments have much less autonomy.
There is also considerable unease among academic staff that arts and humanities could be sidelined as the college seeks to forge a stronger reputation in the science and research arena.
Dr Brady, a former senior academic at Harvard, has restructured and rebranded UCD since his appointment.
At the time of his appointment two years ago, there was a view in some third-level circles that UCD was seriously underperforming. In the survey, one staff member said: "The rot in UCD is terminal."
