At the time of the founding of the RTC, there were two other third-level institutions in the city,
St John's Seminary Waterford News and Star which notes the closing of the St John's Seminary in 1999 and De La Salle Brothers teacher training college, but both had been closed. Waterford politicians made strenuous but unsuccessful efforts to locate a university in Waterford at the time of the formation of the
Queen's University of Ireland in the 1840s. The cause was led by
Thomas Wyse,
Member of Parliament for
Waterford City, who was not influential in the House of Commons, having strong Napoleonic links (he married a niece of
Napoleon I of France), being a Catholic and leaning towards an independent Ireland.
Galway, a much smaller city at the time, won out over Waterford, perhaps because of the necessity for geographical dispersion or to bolster the
Irish language. Wyse wrote in the round on the matter in his text "Education reform or the necessity of a national system of education" (London, 1836). The institute was founded in 1970 as the Regional Technical College, Waterford. Once founded, the regional technical college grew very quickly as a result of the obviously strong regional need for third-level education. In 1997 the college adopted its present name by order of the
Minister for Education Niamh Bhreathnach, with
Dublin Institute of Technology being the only other institution with the "institute of technology" title at the time in Ireland. Following a change of government and enormous political pressure on behalf of other regional technical colleges, especially
Cork Regional Technical College, all other regional technical colleges were renamed similarly by Minister for Education
Micheál Martin. Since 2001, the institute had conferred its own awards at all levels from Higher Certificate to PhD, subject to standards set and monitored by the Higher Education and Training Awards Council (
HETAC) which was established by the Government in June 2001, under the Qualifications (Education and Training) Act, 1999. In October 2005 the institute was selected by
The Sunday Times newspaper as the "Institute of Technology of the Year" in Ireland. The institute now has a student population of approximately 6,000 full-time students and 1,000 part-time students. The Staff currently consists of approximately 470 Full-time academic, 300 part-time and 300 support staff. The institute formally applied in 2006 for university status in accordance with the Universities Act, 1997, and the process of examining the case for redesignation has commenced. In January 2007 Dr Jim Port was engaged by the government to carry out a "preliminary assessment" of the institute's case. WIT and
Nemeton TV (which is based in the Waterford Gaeltacht) run a Higher Diploma in Arts in Television Production supported by Údarás na Gaeltachta. ==Ranking==