NUIG is out of touch

HOW disheartening it is that a third-level institution charged with the higher education of tens of thousands of young Irish people should feel free to ask questions as detailed and as intrusive, as inappropriate and biased, as those asked of women who wished to apply for various positions at NUI Galway.

Is it too much to expect that the college should reflect the mores of the society it serves? The revelation that the college asked prospective employees about their menstrual cycle and their breasts is the kind of caught-in-a-time-warp farce that sustained Fr Ted and his Craggy Island battalion of the bewildered for years.

That the college has unenviable form in this area, and the suspicion that if it was prepared to ask these questions openly, suggests that the attitudes that inform the college’s recruitment policies are at least Victorian.

The college said the widely used procedure was “in line with best practice” but it is hard not to think that it is regressive and outdated.