Kenny Bruce feels education is key to help move the Irish League forward as a whole.
Bruce has always been a keen supporter of football in Northern Ireland and is keen to see the game continue to develop.
At his own club Larne they have not only introduced a full-time model for the first team, but they have also catered for future generations with top of the range training facilities, full-time academy set-up and a scholarship team.
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Bruce feels linking education with football will help more clubs move towards a full-time model and end the "snobbery" towards the league.
"The league is a far more amazing place than what it was five-a-years ago," he said.
"Clearly Larne has played a part in that but every club has improved in many, many areas.
"I think we need to try and move away from part-time football because it's not necessarily part-time football I've got a problem with, it's football snobbery I've got a problem with.
"Football snobbery is there as we are looked upon as a part-time league, the moment we change to a full-time environment and if education and students were a way of being able to help many clubs achieve that in terms of high fees and youth development, it would impact the Northern Ireland senior team as we would spend more time developing players here at home rather than sending them across the water.
"Education and full-time environments are the key to removing football snobbery and allowing our league to flourish and get the credit it deserves.
"I would love to see a league-wide full-time scholarship programme from 16 to 18-years old.
"We work with an organisation called the Steven Gerrard Academy and they are sensational at delivering education and achieving great things through academia for our children.
"Those children are now developing really fast and our U18's for the very first time are challenging for the title and our U20's are getting better.
"All the young people below that are entering that BTec programme are significantly growing.
"I think it gives an opportunity to get kids involved with full-time education at 16, give them full-time football, give full-time coaches the time to develop them and I would love to see that as a league-wide programme.
"Secondly to that, I would love to see a foundation degree programme like we are introducing in September this year with the Northern Regional College.
"A league-wide programme for this would be amazing.
"Somebody could come to Larne at 16-years-old and leave at 20 with one last year of top-up to do for their degree, having played full-time football for four years.
"We lead with education and follow with football and I think that's one of the big things I'd love to see NIFL embrace.
"I think there is a lot of potential and I'm very excited to see how Gerard Lawlor and the team at NIFL shape the future of the league.
"I think there are a lot of changes that could be made to improve it."
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