The acclaimed TV series Pure Mule has a special resonance for the midlands. The institutes of technology are well placed to address the new realities of rural life, but they must be allowed to widen their subject brief and offer students real choice, argues Dr Marian Fitzgibbon, head of the School of Humanities at Athlone IT.

The man who cleans the windows in Athlone Institute of Technology (AIT) has a daughter doing business studies in the college, just like one of the characters in Eugene O'Brien's play Eden. This young woman did not particularly want to do business studies - she hates accounting. She is more interested in media. But this is not an option as AIT does not offer media. For this girl and many of her peers, there is only one college and that is AIT. Maynooth may be 60 miles up the road, NUI Galway 60 miles down the road like Galway Mayo Institute of Technology (GMIT) and IT Sligo, but for her, and for many others in the midlands, there is only one third-level college.

While research has provided us with the statistics on participation in third-level education in Ireland and thus a profile of the type of student who attends the institutes of technology, the recent award-winning RTÉ series Pure Mule, written by Eugene O'Brien, colours in the picture. Set in Banagher, Co Offaly, directly within the catchment of AIT, the programme has a special resonance for the midlands. Not that Pure Mule has merely local application: it replaces the damp misery and savage cruelty of other artistic depictions of rural Ireland - from The Ballroom of Romance to the plays of JB Keane and the novels of John McGahern - with their equally unedifying modern equivalents that are no less brutal.

The institutes of technology (IoTs) - initially established as regional technical colleges - were a brilliant and imaginative response to the circumstances of rural Ireland in the 1970s as well as being timely and prescient in the light of the move to mass education to come. Their contribution to the transformation of the State is widely acknowledged. The features of the system are well-known: local and low-cost provision, a stepped approach to education, small classes to favour those who did not flourish in second-level, practical experience through work-placements giving youngsters a particular edge in the work environment.

At their best the IoTs, animated by invention and discovery and emphasising problem-solving and design captured the excitement that is at the core of education. Above all, they are an expression of the profoundly democratic impulse to enable and empower as opposed to the effective perpetuation of privilege that had been by and large the hallmark of third level up to then. Pure cool in fact.

Is this still true? Thirty years later society has certainly moved on. And in 30 years institutions also move on. Of necessity, the shine of the new dims. On the one hand the IoTs have to resist the sclerosis that institutionalisation often entails, retaining that capacity to read and respond to a changing society that made them exciting in the first place, on the other they must assume the responsibilities that come with age and growth.

Even in its incidentals Pure Mule reflected a number of the salient and uncomfortable realities of the new rural Ireland. While, in theory, we move towards the knowledge society, a sizeable proportion of the population is dependent on construction and low-level service employment. But the true importance of the TV series lies in the extent to which it chronicled life outside the experience of the privileged metropolitan set - the meaninglessness that can be filled only by drink and drugs, the loneliness and gauche ineptitude of young people and particularly of young men, especially in interpersonal relationships, the violence and boorishness that are the result of general cultural deprivation and the disintegration of societal norms and supports.

How does AIT, as the only third-level institution in the midlands, relate to this reality? Does it fit the picture as well as it did 30 years ago? Can it capture the imagination and meet the ambition of its potential student cohort in the same way? The lineaments of the particular type of education the institutes offered in the 1970s are, in the main, still traceable today and continue to hold their own. But change has been exponential and the pace is quickening.

While institute programmes prepare students for careers in engineering, science, computing, design, nursing, hospitality, accounting, sport and leisure, it is now perhaps in the humanities area that a response to the pressing issues of social exclusion is most discernible. Take the social care programmes in AIT which involve 550 people preparing for work in some of the caring professions, undertaking programmes to degree level that address questions of caring in society, whether of children, the disaffected, elderly or disabled people. These programmes are a positive response to the world of Pure Mule; they are an obvious expression of leadership in the face of the statistics on teenage pregnancy, substance abuse and suicide rates of young men.

But is this enough? What about the knowledge society and the creativity it implies? What about the exciting vision of the institutes of technology? What about the young woman who wants to study media? Her inability to do so is a matter of horizons. There are many kinds of horizons, but the most difficult to shift are the horizons in our own heads: the earth was flat for an awfully long time and fear of falling over the edge greatly hampered exploration and discovery. Education is the main instrument of horizon-widening, leading change and development, transcending some of the contingencies of time and place, driving regional development.

As was the case 30 years ago, the potential is immense. Here is a local college that people can attend at a low cost, all the more important in an increasingly expensive society. Even if they have not been successful enough in their Leaving Cert to make it into degree programmes in the universities, they can achieve the same result in AIT, in easy stages and with additional supports in areas where they have difficulty. Instead of being swamped by large anonymous groupings, they can learn in small intimate circles, moderated by expert teachers. Practice placements, closely regulated and supervised with skilled educators assisting students to draw the learning from their practical experience, will give an additional edge when it comes to employment. Still pure cool.

All around the country, institutes of technology have degree programmes on their shelves that would allow students to study media, drama, archaeology, heritage, music, history, literature and so on. Programmes that as well as widening horizons would fuel the sustainable development, integration and social inclusion agendas are the most urgent issue currently facing Irish society as well as supplying the content for the types of employment that underpin the successful knowledge society. The current embargo on such programmes in the institutes of technology, for fatuous reasons of "mission drift", deprives both the 50 per cent of the student population that attend the institutes and the country of their talent, and notably curtails the vision that informed their establishment.

The downside is poor education for poor people. Pure mule or pure cool - the choice is ours!