National College of Ireland's new IFSC campus, which opens its doors next month, will focus on working with businesses and creating packages to suit them, president Joyce O'Connor tells Conor Lally

It's a sunny August morning in the heart of Dublin's International Financial Services Centre (IFSC) and a "gentle revolution" is taking shape.

Workmen take pencils from behind their ears and scribble notes on bits of paper. Nails are being driven home by men with hammers and splashes of paint are added here and there, all under the watchful eye of Prof Joyce O'Connor, president of the National College of Ireland (NCI).

Next month the college opens its doors again for a new academic year.

But this time around students will be taking their seats in new lecture theatres at Ireland's newest, state-of-the-art campus in the IFSC.

The NCI has outgrown its old campus in Ranelagh and Prof O'Connor says the move to the IFSC marks the beginning of a new chapter in the life of the institution of which she has been either director or president for the past 12 years.

"It's all incredibly exciting," she says. The new €71 million campus is six times the size of the college's old home in Ranelagh, and being at the hub of Ireland's financial industry means NCI is now at the forefront of providing education to satisfy the needs of not only individuals, but big business too, says Prof O'Connor.

She believes the days of shortages of college places are long gone in the Republic and that learning institutions will now become increasingly competitive in trying to attract students.

And in an effort to draw in more scholars the NCI's focus is now very much on working hand-in-hand with big business, listening to their needs and formulating education packages that suit their employees, even it that means going out to offer classes in the workplace and holding lectures at 7 a.m.

"I think there's a gentle revolution going in education and in many ways people have not realised that yet," she says.

"The structure of colleges is going to have to change, the teaching hours will have to change, the accessibility will have to change to make it a lot more open and flexible. And I would say that we are there already. But others will not be long in catching up so there is no room to be complacent."

Having begun life as the Catholic Workers College in 1950, the NCI, a non-profit organisation, had just 500 students 10 years ago but this has now grown to 6,000 and is expected to increase to 8,000 by 2004.

Unlike most other third-level institutions in Ireland, NCI's student body is made up of mostly part-time students, with 88 per cent of the student body studying part-time and 12 per cent full-time.

Half of the part-time students study off-campus, either on-line or at one of the NCI's 40 regional centres. It offers courses in accounting, human resource management, European business studies and languages, business law, industrial relations and personnel management, social studies, software systems and computing.

Qualifications are accredited by the Higher Education and Training Awards Council.

At 210,000 sq ft the new campus is six times the size of the Ranelagh base just vacated by the NCI. It boasts a 270-seater lecture theatre, computer laboratories, student residencies for 286 people at €100 a week, small business incubator units, retail outlets, restaurants, a gym and crèche facilities.

But new facilities aside, Prof O'Connor believes the location of the campus at the bosom of big business will prove vital in the years to come as the emphasis in Ireland shifts more to part-time continuous learning.

"When I came here in 1990 the college was at a crossroads and we had to decide what we were going to do in terms of developing," she explains.

"Back in the early 1990s there was a shortage of places for both full-time and part-time study but we felt we had a particular niche in the part-time area and we felt there was a need to grow and make education more accessible to people, at a time and place that suits them. We operate from seven in the morning until 11 in the evening, six days a week."

She believes the provision of education will be used more and more by companies in the future to attract employees and hang onto staff in the longer term. Because of that the NCI now works in close partnership with business in delivering programmes to employees on site.

"Lots of companies have very extensive training programmes and what we've said to them is that we'd be happy to work with them to add value and turn their training programmes into an educational programme with people coming out of it not only with upgraded knowledge but with a certification that can add up to other qualifications.

"A number of companies have seen this as a way of retaining staff by running certain programmes over two years, so that people will stay to get the qualification.

"So in many cases companies can hang onto staff for a lot longer than they would have if they had not offered that educational element. The companies and the individual are winners."

And the location of the new campus offers a unique opportunity to offer tailored education solutions to big business, right on their doorsteps, says Prof O'Connor.

"There's over 11,000 people working in this area and we've carried out a study with the local employers here and they see there's a constant strategic need for the IFSC to upgrade its knowledge. "The tax breaks are going to be limited now so that will no longer give [the IFSC] that edge, but what will is the knowledge base. So we see this as a great opportunity to create a knowledge centre here, catering to the needs of all of those businesses.

"Internationally both Luxembourg and Edinburgh are looking at putting a college in their financial services area so we feel that us being here is a strategic development for the IFSC.

"And for all of the young people working around here it's an opportunity to constantly develop their own education and to look at other careers.

"Literally for many of them their workplaces are just five minutes away; it's very handy."

Prof O'Connor also believes that as part-time education grows, the Government will come under increasing pressure from business and students to fund courses, just as public coffers now pay for second- and third-level education.

"At the moment if you're doing a certified course you get tax relief but the Government have to look at ways of improving on that.

"Most courses cost between €1,000 and €2,000 and for others its €5,000 or indeed much more than that.

"As the numbers of people between the ages of 18 and 21 decreases, the Government will have to look at ways of funding part-time education; the resources will have to be transferred into the part-time market.

"And, I think, in future national wage agreements education will become central, it will become part of people's package.

"The future of Irish education lies in the part-time \in moving in and out of learning, always updating knowledge. For us it will be about keeping the learner central to what we do, that's what we get a of>.">

Name: Professor Joyce O'Connor

Job: President, National College of Ireland

Age: 54

Background: Educated at Loreto Convent Bray, UCD and Harvard. Former senior research fellow in the Department of Social Science, UCD and head of the Department of Languages and Applied Social Studies at UL. She is currently chair of the Further Education and Training Awards Council, Dublin Inner City Partnership, Ballymun Regeneration Project and the National Training Agency's National Accreditation Committee.

Family: Married to Patrick with two grown up children Aoife and Rory.