The institutes of technology have been reorganised lately and are now called “technical universities”.
The degree you get is generally much the same from any of them - but for some insane reason graduates of the institutes of technology/technical universities don’t get to vote in the national elections for the upper house (senate). Only graduates of the more prestigious ones get that right.
The whole bloody upper house is insane in Ireland, but it's convenient for the legislators so it doesn't get reformed.
It was deeply funny listening to the sitting senators tell us how important the Seanad is, because for all of us - the Seanad was some useless shit we couldn’t vote for or influence in any real way.
I have no idea if it's useless shit and I admit to learning about the Seanad 15 minutes ago from Wikipedia but it seems to me that it's supposed to be a weak technocratic advisory chamber insulated from popular will. At least it seems to make more sense than the House of Lords.
In 1979, there was a referendum in which 92% of the voters were in favor of extending Seanad representation to graduates of other higher education institutions. This changed the constitution in a way that allowed laws to be passed to implement that, but no such laws have yet been passed. There was a ruling by the Supreme Court of Ireland in 2023 requiring a law to actually be passed, but the ruling is currently suspended until 26 May 2025.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventh_Amendment_of_the_Const...
As a graduate of an institute of technology, having transferred from a university, I don’t get to vote in the Seanad (senate) elections at all.
To clarify: most upper house seats are elected by members of parliament. There’s a pool of seats reserved for graduates of a subset of universities to vote on.
It’s terribly undemocratic and needs to be reformed or abolished.
But the Irish Senate has a relatively unusual composition and voting system anyway: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seanad_%C3%89ireann#Compositio...
This is not true. The law defines which schools are allowed to call themselves "hogeschool", and also that the English translation of that word is "university of applied sciences" or, if limited to a specific job profile, "university of <said profile>".
See https://zoek.officielebekendmakingen.nl/stb-2017-97.html
> Het voeren van de naam hogeschool is voorbehouden aan de instellingen voor hoger onderwijs die zijn opgenomen in de bijlage van deze wet onder g, en aan rechtspersonen voor hoger onderwijs. Onder het voeren van de naam hogeschool wordt tevens het voeren van deze naam in samenstellingen verstaan, alsmede het voeren van de naam hogeschool in vertalingen. In afwijking van artikel 1.22, eerste lid, wordt de naam hogeschool in het Engels aangeduid met «university of applied sciences» dan wel, bij hogescholen die opleiden tot een bepaald beroepsprofiel, «university» met daarachter het vakgebied.
But that‘s intentional. Former FHs are practically identical in law to universities. They all have the right to promotion, their masters and bachelors are legally identical to universities‘ masters and bachelors.
There's a very clear distinction between FHs and Universities. Not necessarily in reputation or level of education, but they are separated entities. And you cannot get a PhD from an FH.
In short, bachelors and masters are indeed legally identical to the ones acquired at universities, but most do not have the right to promotion. This mostly depends on the state they're in. And they are not allowed to call themselves "Universität" (though some have rebranded to "Hochschule").
All FHs that I know do have an option for getting a Phd through them, but they themselves can't grant them. Instead, an FH can cooperate with an Universität through a sort of loophole. The Phd students spend their time at the FH, but they have two supervisors and get their Phd from the "Universität".
But it seems like it is only a matter of time until difference, too, is no more.
The RWTH in Germany still uses Hochschule, but does add University now to their name.
And if you don't trust Wikipedia, the RWTH refers to itself as an "Universität", see here for example: https://www.rwth-aachen.de/cms/root/Die-RWTH/Aktuell/Hochsch... Doing so would be illegal if they weren't one, so I don't see where the claim that they're not comes from.
(Slide 9, for example).
Edit: you are right that the difference might not always apply, but they are not always identical by default as far as I understand it.
Universities of applied sciences are governed under the "Fachhochschulgesetz"[1] (Universities of Applied Sciences Law) while universities are governed under the "Universitätsgesetz"[2] (Universities Law). This carries loads of differences with it, i.e. when it comes to academic freedom and right to promotion. Professors at universities of applied sciences are much more limited in their academic freedom and these institutions do not possess the right to promotion at all.
Not sure where you got your information as it's wildly untrue in some respects.
[1] https://ris.bka.gv.at/GeltendeFassung.wxe?Abfrage=Bundesnorm...
[2] https://ris.bka.gv.at/GeltendeFassung.wxe?Abfrage=Bundesnorm...
Enough harassment for tonight?
So "Technische Universiteit Delft" is not an advanced institution?
In either case, in Sweden "högskola" covers everything from small rinky-dink schools up to KTH (Kungliga Tekniska Högskola) in Stockholm and CTH (Chalmers Tekniska Högskola) which are among the top engineering schools in Sweden.
Both award doctoral degrees. I have not heard many people in Sweden argue that KTH/CTH are not as advanced as the top universities. The difference is just that the technical schools do not have departments for the humanities.
It is, and it is also one of the 14 Dutch institutions that are allowed to use the Dutch "universiteit" name. But the English term "university" seems to be unprotected in the Netherlands.
(And then, of course, there’s also the term ‘volksuniversiteit’…)
It still isn't. Unlike KTH and Chalmers, "Jönköping University" is listed as a university college, not a university: https://www.uka.se/swedish-higher-education-authority/about-...
These are the checks and balances that are in place, and unfortunately looking up from the faded old daguerreotypes of Ådalen 1931 and addressing issues from this century does not seem to be at all a priority.
You can get some action if you manage to dress the problem up as as a J.P. Morgan type industrialist opressing the workers (as happened with the Tesla blockade), but if it doesn't fit that narrative you're generally SOL.
To circumvent this, private non-state-certified schools deliver things called "Bachelor", "MSc", "MBA" or "Mastère" that walk and quack like regular diplomas but since they're using those specific names, they're not actually state-recognized diplomas. Which means that if a company is hiring "people with a Licence" they can reasonably deny someone with a "Bachelor" because even though it's also a 3-year degree, there is no guarantee whatsoever that it's actually worth anything. Anybody can create a company and hand out sheets of paper with "MSc in Psychoceramics" written on it.
This is a big problem for high schoolers who usually don't know the difference and end up paying thousands of euros for private schools that deliver close-to-worthless degrees (not all are worthless, but their worth is mostly correlated to how well-known the school is, whereas if you get a real state-certified degree from a random university anywhere in France it'll be recognized by any company).
The difference here is that you are allowed to wear the title of MSc either way and both programmes do confer ECTS points - only the latter does not qualify you for a PhD.
(Edit: I wrote “community college” because I though that was what the grand-parent had said - but it was just “college”.)
In the United States, community colleges are primarily two-year public institutions of tertiary education. Community colleges offer undergraduate education in the form of an associate degree. [In addition community colleges also offer remedial education, GEDs, high school diplomas, technical diplomas and academic certificates, and in rare cases, a limited number of 4-year bachelor's degrees.]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Associate_degree
An associate degree or associate's degree is an undergraduate degree awarded after a course of post-secondary study lasting two to three years. It is a level of academic qualification above a high school diploma and below a bachelor's degree.
The latter offer recreational courses, like painting or language learning or Indian cooking, usually one hour per week for a quarter year or so. The courses are held by laypeople.
"In most [UK] universities, professorships are reserved for only the most senior academic staff, and other academics are generally known as 'lecturers', 'senior lecturers' and 'readers'."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_ranks_in_the_United_K...
nothing else.
usually just adding a business major to a place with medicine, engineering and law is enough to cross the threshold and jump from college to uni.
> To put it very simply, the difference between universities (universitet) and university colleges (högskolor) is that universities can award degrees at the doctoral (third cycle) level because they have general permission to do so.
The text wrongly implies that "högskolor" cannot award doctoral degrees. This is not true. It's just that they don't have a built-in general permission to do so.
In practice, KTH/CTH etc have a large number of doctoral students and award many doctoral degrees every year.
And as was written above, some establishments, as they grew from institutes to universities, decided to keep the old name, MIT and CalTech included.