SIR DEREK BIRLEY: The contributions of Sir Derek Birley, who died on May 14th aged 75, to the cause of higher education in Northern Ireland were immense. His pioneering work in drawing together the Ulster Polytechnic and, later, the New University of Ulster into the University of Ulster, of which he was vice-chancellor from 1984 to 1991, cannot be overestimated.
His planning and implementation skills, and his charisma, attracted the loyalty essential to such ventures. With a Yorkshire grit as abrasive as the Northern Ireland variety, he quickly established himself as a friend of the province, and was soon welcomed by the warring tribes.
Educated at Hemsworth Grammar School, Yorkshire, and Queens' College, Cambridge, he spent four years in the Royal Artillery before moving into education in 1955, as administrative assistant to Leeds education committee. After further periods as assistant education officer in Dorset and Lancashire, he was appointed deputy director of education in Liverpool in 1964. The watershed in his life came in 1970, when he took the post of rector at the new Ulster College, at Jordanstown, near Belfast.
This was a time of major change in higher education throughout Britain, although the binary system of universities and polytechnics being cast in the rest of the country did not translate to Northern Ireland because the provincial government in Belfast had responsibility for all levels of education locally.
Within the province, the Lockwood report of 1964 had initiated a tripartite system comprising Queen's University, Belfast, and two new institutions, the New University of Ulster (NUU), eventually located at Coleraine, and the Ulster College.
Lockwood had made it clear, however, that technician training was to be the central pillar of the Ulster College; there would be no degree courses, and no vision for a new-style polytechnic in Northern Ireland.
Derek Birley was to change all that. He described Lockwood as a half-baked proposal -- a federation of disparate colleges. He was convinced that polytechnic status was essential if the new college was to achieve its full potential; indeed, his first report to his governors argued for the name to be changed to the Ulster Polytechnic, and for the introduction of a multi-level array of courses.
In pursuing that vision, he took no prisoners and suffered no fools. A formidable figure both physically and intellectually, he argued his case with vigour and relish. In his own words: "Institutions resistant to ministry control and unappreciative of the benignity of ministerial grace and favour were evidently a new and unwelcome phenomenon."
Under his leadership, the Ulster Polytechnic rapidly became a successful venture, while NUU was struggling. Another review of higher education, this time in 1982 by Sir Henry Chilver, produced what Derek Birley called "a very wet baby" - proposing, in effect, no change in the shape of the institutions, but relying on improved co-ordination to achieve any necessary transformation.
This was not what the government in London, by then responsible for Northern Ireland education under direct rule, wanted to hear, so Chilver's recommendations were rejected and plans put in hand for a merger of NUU and the Ulster Polytechnic.
Things moved ahead at a great pace, and the steering group prepared the way for the new institution, the University of Ulster (UU). Derek Birley was designated vice-chancellor in 1983, and the launch the following year was smooth and efficient, and achieved without interrupting a single student's progress.
Derek Birley was no fan of mergers. He argued that they "are accidental phenomena, mere instruments of social and educational policy, not substitutes for it". He was convinced that the Ulster merger would not have happened but for the political accident of direct rule, arising from social unrest.
Inclusiveness was a central plank in his educational philosophy. He maintained a strongly-held conviction that exclusivity was not the same thing as quality. He wanted a portfolio of courses that allowed everyone to achieve their full potential, and, under his leadership, UU was to offer courses from honours degrees to national diplomas - in his words, "escalators going at different speeds, but allowing people to cross between them".
He deplored anything that smacked of discrimination, whether based on gender, religion or social standing. Practising what he preached, he established a chair of women's studies, and worked closely with schools and further education colleges to ensure easy access to the UU.
From the outset, he was concerned that north-west Northern Ireland, and Derry city in particular, should get its fair share of the higher education cake. The UU's first development plan forecast a growth in student numbers at its Magee campus in Derry from 90 students to 800 by the academic year 1989-'90.
After his retirement, he went to Coventry, where his second wife, Professor Norma Reid, was a pro-vice chancellor at Coventry University. He died in Parktown, Johannesburg, where she is now vice-chancellor of the University of the Witwatersrand. She survives him, as do his two sons, Robert and David, from his first marriage.
Sir Derek Birley: born 1926; died, May 2002