The Cork Institute of Technology (CIT), formerly known as the Regional Technical College, Cork, opened in 1973, with its main campus based in the suburbs of Cork city, in an area called Bishopstown.
It is equipped with theatres, lecture rooms, laboratories, drawing studios, a library, computer suites, open access computing centre and research units. Students can enjoy the recreational facilities, which include a running track, tennis courts, all-weather pitch, a gymnasium and grass playing pitches. It is a mixture of concrete panelled buildings and extensive modern brick architecture.
CIT has 17,000 part-time and full time students in art, business, music, engineering, drama and science disciplines, while the most popular faculties are engineering and science and business and humanities. The constituent colleges are the CIT Crawford College of Art and Design, the CIT Cork School of Music and the National Maritime College of Ireland.
Students are drawn to the Cork Institute of Technology by its strong presence of practical and lab-based content in the curriculum, its close links to industry, small class sizes, excellent social and sporting facilities, highly-qualified, research active academic staff and a range of internship opportunities with global forms and innovative startups.
It is possible in future that the Cork Institute of Technology could merge with Institute of Technology, Tralee, which would created one entity that will most likely be named the Munster Technological University. It would offer a multi-campus proposition spanning Cork and Kerry.
This would create a second university in the region, and a third in the province of Munster.
