Call for colleges to provide wider range of part-time courses

THIRD-level colleges must urgently provide a wider range of part-time degree courses, the head of their funding agency has claimed.

Higher Education Authority (HEA) chairman Michael Kelly made the call to universities and institutes of technology as more than 150 of Europe’s leading educationalists and business people gathered in Dublin to discuss interaction between third-level colleges and industry.

He said the colleges need to significantly increase their portfolio of flexible and part-time learning opportunities.

“The limited availability of part-time opportunities, particularly at undergraduate level, is a weakness that must be addressed as a matter of urgency,” Mr Kelly said.

In its submission to the National Strategy for Higher Education, the HEA has called for a funding framework based on transferable credit-based learning.

“This would effectively relate funding allocations to the total number of credits undertaken in an institution rather than the total number of full-time students and would, thereby, secure parity for more flexible forms of delivering higher education. This change would facilitate a substantial reorientation in programme delivery towards part-time and flexible courses,” Mr Kelly said.

Opening the conference, Education Minister Batt O’Keeffe said higher education institutions have already made significant responses to the needs of people who are losing their jobs. More than 7,000 places in the further and higher education sectors have been announced in recent months for upskilling and retraining of workers trying to get back into the labour force.

Meanwhile, Alice Leahy, director of the TRUST organisation working with homeless people, has called for more further education places to be made available in Post Leaving Certificate (PLC) courses.

Although 1,500 extra places are being funded by the Government this year, recent figures from the Teachers’ Union of Ireland showed there was one disappointed applicant for every one who secured one of the 31,500 places on PLC programmes this autumn.