Two Irish Colleges Have Announced Surprising Plans To Try And Merge
Cork and Tralee institutes of technology have come together to apply to amalgamate as a Technological University. As part of this process the two ITs are spending part of a €70,000 branding budget to decide whether they should alter the name of the technological university that will be created by the merger.
The legislation that will see the two ITs come together has yet to be ratified but CIT and ITT are expected to apply for the change next year.
The provisional name of the merger is Munster Technological University and is expected to enrol its firsts students in 2019. However, the colleges first want to do their due diligence to evaluate the name’s suitability.
A budget of around €70,000 has been set aside for six months of branding work from early 2018.
There is uncertainty surrounding the process of these two colleges coming together as a technological university. The Technological Universities Bill passed committee stage last Thursday but is unlikely to become law before the end of 2017.
There have been concerns over the developments between two institutes from the HEA board who raised potential issues with the merger in 2014. Minutes of a specially convened meeting reveal strong concerns about the credibility of the plan as proposed by the two colleges. These concerns included the "insufficiency of the costing of the plan", the inadequacy of the mission statement and the "erroneous assumption" that achieving TU status would lead to additional research revenue.
H/T: The Irish Examiner