The Private College That Stayed The Course
As Griffith College celebrates its 50th anniversary, founder Diarmuid Hegarty tells Nick Mulcahy how the private institution has overcome many obstacles to success
When Diarmuid Hegarty, founder of Griffith College, wanted an offthe-shelf company for his education business, the well-educated lawyers in McCann FitzGerald supplied him with Bellerophon, the divine Corinthian hero of Greek mythology. Bellerophon was also the name of several Royal Navy warships, including one that accepted Napoleon’s surrender in 1815.
Though the French emperor’s military career spanned a quarter of a century, Hegarty’s business career has lasted twice as long, and the Dublin 8 college recently marked the ‘GC50’ landmark with campus celebrations. That the private college has lasted 50 years is quite the achievement, as not many peers do. The Department of Education sees higher education as the preserve of the State, and non-private third level is funded with enormous taxpayer resources every year.
For 2024, the education department’s higher education budget allocation is €2,450m. With 200,000 students in the system annually, that works out as a public subsidy of €12,250 per student, per annum. For Griffith College’s 7,000 students there are no subsidies, not even SUSI maintenance grants for Irish students outside Dublin.
Like every other college and university, Griffith College students gain their places through the CAO process for courses accredited by QQI. “The reason our students don’t get SUSI funding is because of a particular ideological view in the department,” says Hegarty. “In my view, that day is
Diarmuid Hegarty has provided private education for half a century
gone. The reality is that the taxpayer deserves better, and a government department that gets value from money. It’s a pity because we could be doing a lot more for here in Dublin 8 for Irish students.
“There’s a real need for a third-level institution in Dublin 8 to teach the students of Dublin. We have put in proposal after proposal suggesting how we could teach the students at much lesser cost to the State, but every time we come up against a brick wall.”
About 30% of the Griffith student population is from overseas. Without that trade, spread across campuses in Dublin, Cork and Limerick, the college could not survive. The overseas student body is drawn from countries including India, China, Vietnam, and Indonesia, and there are partnerships with European colleges too.
“Students come here for a semester to improve their English,” says Hegarty. “They continue their computing studies, for example, but they are taught in English and of course they are living in an Englishspeaking environment.”
Domestic and overseas students generated €27.6m in revenue for Griffith College in 2022. Operating profit that year was €3.6m, down from €6.8m in 2021, as administrative overheads increased by €2m. Of the 454 people employed by Griffith College in 2022, 293 were involved in teaching and training, and 138 in administrative functions. Though the college received nothing from the State, it paid c.€7m in payroll taxes to the Exchequer.
Hegarty (75) doesn’t whinge about State indifference to his enterprise. He mentions it in passing as he reflects on the college’s progress, which started out as training for chartered accountants to help them pass their professional exams. The gap in the market the then 25-year-old spotted in 1974 was that only one in eight CAI students were passing their finals.
He stresses that Business and Accounting Training (BAT) wasn’t a grind school; the accountancy firms would release their trainees in the autumn for course work. BAT expanded into exam training for other accountancy bodies, initially from premises in Milltown and Ranelagh, and then from its own building on the corner of Morehampton Road and Herbert Park in Donnybrook.
Director Tomás Mac Eochagáin joined the college to develop degree programmes, starting with Computing Science in association with the University of Ulster. The Ulster link-up was a double bonus for BAT as, for a while, northern students
‘Every time we come up against a brick wall’