Ирландиядағы технологиялық институттар

Higher education institution in Ireland

An Institute of Technology (IT) is a type of higher education college found in Ireland. In 2018, there were a total of fourteen colleges that use the title of Institute of Technology, which were created from the late 1960s and were formerly known as Regional Technical Colleges. The exception to this was Dublin Institute of Technology which emerged independently of the Regional College system. The Technological Universities Act of 2018 allowed the merger of two or more IoTs into Technological Universities, which saw the creation of the Technological University Dublin in 2019; Munster Technological University and Technological University Shannon: Midlands Midwest in 2021; and Atlantic Technological University and South East Technological University in 2022.

The institutions were run under Section 21 (2) of the Vocational Education Acts from 1970 until 1992 as special subcommittees of the Vocational Education Committees, and placed on an independent basis thereafter by the Regional Technical Colleges Acts in 1993. In the late 1990s, all of the institutions were upgraded to Institute of Technology status. This was in recognition of the high standards, including university level research, which takes place at them. The institutes are governed by the Institutes of Technology Acts 1992 to 2006. Having been given delegated authority to confer their own awards in some cases up to Doctoral level by HETAC from 2001 onwards, in 2019 the institutes were designated as awarding bodies up to masters level in their own right.

The individual institutions are structured similar to other universities, particularly Irish ones. Each institution has a Director, who is the chief operational officer of the institution, usually assisted by an ad hoc senior management team; a Registrar, who is the chief academic officer of the institution; a Governing Council, which oversees operational affairs; an Academic Council, which oversees academic affairs. Each academic school has a Head of School and each academic department of a school has a Head of Department.

The institutions traditional courses were National Certificate and National Diploma type courses particularly in business, engineering and science, this was very much the founding principle. During the late 1970s degrees at Bachelor's level were introduced, later Master's and Doctoral levels were also allowed. In recent years there has been a rapid expansion in apprenticeship and nursing type courses.

Traditionally awards were conferred by the National Council for Educational Awards, this statutory authority became the Higher Education and Training Awards Council, and other awards are conferred by the Further Education and Training Awards Council. Some specialised courses, such as accountancy, are validated by professional bodies but these are nearly always the exception.