Third-level colleges can't take any more budget cuts
Wednesday November 12th 2003
THE BY now annual ritual whereby expectations are softened up through carefully placed leaks and pessimistic projections of exchequer revenues is now in full flow.
Speculation in recent days that health and education will escape the worst is cold comfort to these sectors where the impact of benchmarking will be felt most keenly. For example, in the University sector, if our 2004 exchequer funding is held at 2003 levels, this will result in a real cut of up to 10pc.
Last week in an unprecedented move, the heads of all seven universities combined to deliver a stark message to Government. We have sustained year on year cuts in exchequer support in real terms since 1995 and the sector simply cannot take any more.
When the abolition of fees is taken into account, direct support per student for universities actually fell by €1,240 between 1995 and 2001. The sector has coped over this period by increasing productivity but we are now at the limits where cracks are beginning to show.
To coincide with our statement last week, the Conference of Heads of Irish Universities (C.H.I.U.), the organisation representing all seven Heads of Universities, published a paper commissioned from Farrell Grant Sparks Consulting on the future funding of the university sector.
The authors of the paper set out how underfunding is impacting on the sector in terms of student teacher ratios and ultimately the quality of the graduates we produce. The paper also pointed out the ambitious targets set for the sector by Government in terms of underpinning our economic competitiveness and developing a modern knowledge based economy.
In the debate that followed the intervention by the university heads last week one issue in particular has come to the fore. While there is a clear political and official consensus on the necessity of developing a knowledge based economy as the key to Ireland's economic health, there is no consensus at any level as to what is necessary to achieve this.
As Professor Michael E. Porter, the world renowned guru on competitiveness, observed in a recent lecture delivered in Dublin, that there has been a failure in Ireland to understand and commit to the actions required to develop Ireland as an innovative society. My colleague Dr Gerry Wrixon spoke last week about a disconnect and a lack of joined-up thinking within Government on this issue.
The Department of Finance provides a set figure or envelope within which the Department of Education and Science must fund all its services and it appears no one cares to question the wisdom of forcing ministers to make choices between sectoral demands such as primary school funding and cross-sectoral priorities such as funding for higher education.
C.H.I.U. has rightfully acknowledged the Government's decision of last week in respect of a recommencement of research capital funding, frozen in November 2002. The pause of twelve months led to a disconnect between the efforts of Science Foundation Ireland to attract world class researchers to Ireland and the refusal of the Department of Education and Science to construct the laboratories in which those highly valued researchers would work.
But if the country is to reap its full return from this investment, and if it is to retain the confidence of foreign investors and international researchers alike, Government must expand its thinking on the investment in recurrent funding of universities. The FGS paper starkly illustrated the impact of the gap between rhetoric and reality in terms of where our university sector compares against our key international competitors. For example:
- Ireland is ranked joint 16th out of 28 countries in terms of spend on third level relative to per capita GDP.
- Ireland is ranked 17th out of 28 countries in terms of actual amount spent on each third level student.
- Ireland's universities have a worse student: teacher ratio than universities in 15 out of 20 countries.
From the perspective of our continued economic health, cutting university funding is the equivalent of telling the IDA in the 1980's to stop building advance factories.
Today, the new crucial factor in the IDA strategy is more subtle and longer term.
Human capital in the form of highly trained graduates and researchers has taken the place of the advanced factory. You cannot produce top class, leading edge research or IT graduates in out-of-date laboratories with dilapidated equipment.
There is a need for a new national consensus that recognises the linkage of university resourcing, and preparedness to develop Ireland's position in the global knowledge economy. There is a clear need for the messages from the IDA, SFI and the Universities to be based on the substance of integrated development.
While the forthcoming review of third level education by the OECD will address both the required quantum and mix of funding sources for Irish universities, it is important that the Government in next year's estimates does not further compound our problems.
Government must also take the lead in building the political and social consensus to support the level of investment in higher education necessary to bring about and sustain Ireland as an innovation society.
Dr Seamus Smyth is President of the NUI Maynooth.
Seamus Smyth
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