Did you know that Kilroy’s College is a third generation Irish business? Distance learning has come a very long way since Kilroy’s College was founded in 1932 by Paddy Joseph Kilroy – the grandfather of our current Director of Studies, Patrick Kilroy.
Founder
Paddy Joseph Kilroy was born in Athlone in 1908. He came from a family of eight siblings. Patrick left school at fourteen, as like many other people at that time, his parents couldn’t afford secondary education fees. He went to work in a garage in the village.
He started to take correspondence courses in different subjects from Bennett College in London for the next five years. After his experience with this type of education he became a firm believer in correspondence education and viewed distance learning as a practical and affordable alternative to going to class.
In 1932 he wrote a correspondence course in Book-Keeping and went to Dublin to try to introduce it to the public. In the same year he founded the “Irish Correspondence College”. He placed his first ad into the Irish Press in February 1932 – which had been founded the previous year by Eamon De Valera.
Enquiries came in by post and the course became an instant success. Within a few years he had 1000 students.
On the Move
The College was situated first in Ely Place, Dublin 2 but soon Ely Place was not big enough and it needed more space. In 1934 larger premises were needed again and the College moved to 4 Molesworth Street, a building where Michael Collins and other leaders of the Independence movement held many meetings. In 1936 the College outgrew its accommodation again and moved to Molesworth Hall, 40-44 Molesworth Street, Dublin 2. It was in this building that the very first Abbey play was staged.
The general public began to tell their friends to write to “Kilroy’s College” to improve their education and over time the institute became known as Kilroy’s College, which is what it is called to this day. Paddy developed many other courses including preparation courses for the Garda entrance examination and the County Council Scholarship – which was aimed at helping students to afford the fees for secondary education that he himself could not afford when he was a child. His wife, Mary Smyth, who hailed from Donegal was also heavily involved in the day-to-day running of the College.
Molesworth Hall was designated a preserved building as it was designed by the well-known architect, Woodward, who also designed the library at Oxford University. Sadly the building was demolished overnight on Easter Monday 1978 by developers and, although students protested and took over the building, they could not prevent its total destruction and Kilroy’s College moved to a different address – Cambridge House, Cambridge Road, Ringsend. Within a short time the College was employing twenty people.
Paddy Joseph Kilroy 1908-1979
Patrick sadly died in 1979. His son, Charles, took over the business and ran the company for some twenty five years. He developed many new courses and had a special interest in developing Psychology courses. The Child Psychology course became a big success and was sold under royalty agreements to many different countries. He also specialised in developing new Business and Accountancy courses, as well as lifestyle courses, such as Creative Writing, Journalism and academic courses such as the Junior and Leaving Certificate.
Kilroy’s College in the Digital Age
Today the College is run by the founder’s grandson, Patrick Kilroy. Over the last sixteen years he has brought the College into the digital age with our Virtual Campus, which allows students to access their course materials, submit their assignments and contact their tutor 24/7 online – as well as continuing to offer correspondence (paper based) courses to those who prefer the traditional methods.
The College now has over sixty different courses and has students from more than twenty different countries. In fact we have an Avionics student based in Mongolia and a Creative Writing student based in Antarctica studying with us at the moment.
Since March 2010 Kilroy’s College has been an accredited provider of QQI courses and is also a certified partner for many internationally accredited IT related courses. The College is probably best known for our home study leaving certificate preparation courses – we have fourteen subjects available all at higher and ordinary level – as well as our career preparation courses, which help to prepare candidates for entry into the Garda, Nursing and Civil Service. We recently added a new course for Army and Naval Service candidates. Our diploma courses are also very popular and provide our students with a varied range of different subjects and have helped many of them to get back into education or back to work.
In spite of all this progress some things have not changed – the ethos of the College is that we still provide affordable and accessible education, our students still study from home and the office is still based in Dublin!