Eighteen academics at Dublin Institute of Technology have written to the chairman of the institute’s governing body to express their discontent with the amalgamation process with Tallaght and Blanchardstown ITs.
The academics took the “unprecedented step” of writing the letter to the college’s chairman, Professor Tom Collins, as they felt they had been given an inferior status and were aggrieved with the process of setting up the new technical university.
They claim to have been excluded in the process while heads of schools from the other two partaking colleges were being made “ex-officio members of the senior team discussing the future of the technological university”.
The DIT academics have been told that their positions are as merely “operational managers”, and have responded by calling the situation a travesty considering that the staff of the college had created a “de facto” university in everything but name.
The project has been given the title TU4Dublin and it will involve DIT, along with Tallaght and Blanchardstown Institutes of Technologies, amalgamating to create a new technological university which will be headquartered in DIT’s Grangegorman campus on Dublin’s northside.
DIT Construction student, Shane Gill, believes the process would prove too overwhelming for DIT staff.
“From my two years in the college, the heads of schools have proved unable to deal with student numbers efficiently. There have been many times when lectures have been canceled due to venues or lecturers being unable to take large quantities of students”
“I think they would be too overwhelmed and unable to cope with the even larger quantities of students in a university setting,” added Gill.
IT Tallaght student, Sean Brown, complained that there is little to no communication between the colleges and students regarding the amalgamation process.
“IT Tallaght is giving us no information on it. I can guarantee if you went around campus asking students about it, they wouldn’t be able to give you much information. Some students probably don’t even know it is happening at all,” said Brown.
A member of the TU4 committee was unable to comment on the matter when approached.
James Nolan
Image Credit: RTE