Why would Institutes of Technology want to be reclassified as universities, your correspondent asks? There are many reasons why those of us who work in the technological sector are profoundly uneasy. A few will help explain the desire for change whatever about the route of that change.

Firstly, the ITs are generally grossly under capitalised. This means that our buildings, our grounds, our lecture theatres and classrooms are, in many cases, in appalling condition.

Support staff and support facilities are available to us in much smaller numbers and, as a result, our students don't take long to realise that non-academic services such as health, recreation, housing, career advice etc. are in much shorter supply than in the universities.

Furthermore, the ITs are not taken seriously by government, and are not seen as equal partners in third-level education. The Irish Council for Science Technology and Innovation (ICSTI) has 24 members. Eleven of those members are attached to universities - two are from what could be called the Institutes of Technology but one of these is from DIT which is soon to become a university and the other is currently on leave from his Institute.

So the ICSTI, which is supposed to advise Government on science, technology and innovation hasn't a single member currently working in the sector of education which specialises in science and technology and which is acknowledged by many to have contributed to our recent economic success.

And, of course, we are repeatedly subjected to various standard evaluation procedures, usually by groups dominated by university academics, all in the name of quality assurance. This is fair enough, but we stand back in amazement and wonder why no such rigorous quality assurance procedures are put in place to assure quality to the hundreds if not thousands of ordinary pass graduates who leave the universities every year.

Separate but equal sounds great but we see no sign of equality even on the remote horizon and, therefore, many people in the technological sector are looking for a route out of this duality which increasingly we believe has left us underresourced, underfunded and without any serious respect in government circles.