Some 1,800 graduates have been receiving their parchments at conferring ceremonies at Athlone Institute of Technology (AIT ) yesterday and today.
Qualifications ranging from Higher Certificate through to PhD will be presented to the graduates, who are attending from all over Ireland and around the world.
AIT president, Professor Ciarán Ó Catháin, said that: “One of the fundamentals of third level education is that you operate in a stimulus-rich environment. We’ve worked hard at AIT to provide students with an education that has exposed them to new ideas, to new ways of thinking.”
He encouraged graduates to take the experiences they had in AIT and to draw on them. “Develop your ideas, don’t be afraid to be radical,” he advised.
“We hear repeatedly from our political leaders that Ireland must become a knowledge society, an innovation island...Graduates are the pillars on which that future will be built. You are the entrepreneurs and the intrapreneurs of the future. You are the business leaders,” he said to them in his conferring address.
Commenting on the fact that 400 international students of 53 different nationalities are studying at AIT, he pointed to the reputation which the institute enjoys overseas.
“The AIT welcome, where each student is made feel that they genuinely belong, is a major consideration,” he said.
“Other significant factors include the fact that our alumni are successful in securing employment, with only 13 per cent of last year’s graduates looking for work, while we have also invested €100 million in building a state-of-the-art campus. Our students, whether they be from Ballinsloe, Barcelona, or Beijing deserve the very best education, and that is what we are committed to delivering.”
Given the current difficulties in the jobs market, Professor Ó Catháin said that it was “inevitable that some graduates will have to travel overseas to build their careers”. Highlighting the case of civil engineering graduates in particular, he said that several have already secured employment in New Zealand, Australia, the UK, the US, and Africa.
