NUI Maynooth hopes to significantly reduce its reliance on State funds as a result of a five-year plan to be launched by Minister for Education Mary Hanafin next week. The university hopes to gain new funding from closer links with the private sector. It says the promotion of public-private partnerships can help deliver capital projects, writes Seán Flynn
Maynooth also wants to double its number of PhD students by 2013, while also significantly increasing the number from disadvantaged backgrounds.
NUI Maynooth has been one of the success stories of Irish third-level education in recent years. The university, which has pioneered close links with schools all across west Dublin, has seen a significant increase in applications from Leaving Cert students under the CAO process.
This success has been achieved at a time when other colleges have seen a fall in student demand.
Specific goals of the 2006-11 plan include:
reducing reliance on State annual block grants from the current level of over 40 per cent;
increasing research funding by 60 per cent to €25 million in 2011;
developing links with other third-level colleges;
reforming internal management and organisational structures.
Like similar plans for other colleges, the Maynooth plan stresses the need for what it calls "internationally-recognised excellence in research" in selected areas of the sciences and the humanities.
The university plans to "grow and enhance" its postgraduate research in line with national objectives. It promises to "develop research activity such that the university will be clearly recognised as a major research-led liberal arts and science institution by 2011".
Maynooth hopes to achieve significant internal reform without the rancour which has accompanied such change in UCD and UCC. Its strategic plan refers to an "appetite for change and its associated risks among key academic personnel".
Maynooth has a student population of more than 6,000. Some 50 per cent are drawn from Kildare and neighbouring counties.