College tuition fees 'should be reconsidered'
Friday November 26th 2004
THE issue of tuition fees is not going to go away and the Government should reconsider their reintroduction, an international expert told a university conference yesterday.
Professor Michael Shattock, who was a member of the OECD team that reviewed higher education here, warned that Ireland's economy will be threatened unless there is more investment in a reformed and dynamic higher education system.
However, he said he was aware of how politically controversial the reintroduction of fees would be.
Prof Shattock also told a Conference of Heads of Irish Universities seminar in University College Cork that the Irish higher education system was now at a crossroads. Unless reform was initiated now, higher education risked being marginalised, he said.
The universities had grown rapidly on the back of rising student numbers but this has often reinforced older structures rather than forced organisational change, he added.
From a research perspective, in order to achieve best results, universities needed to be more competitive and to concentrate their resources in areas or departments that showed promise, said Prof Shattock.
He said too many staff members were not contributing actively to research, adding that universities should have longer periods of probation and a much tougher approach to granting permanent tenure.
"If universities are going to justify the rhetoric of 'world class', they will have to conform to world-class standards which, for example, in research terms means at least 90pc of their academic staff will have to be genuinely research active. This is not going to be achieved overnight," he said.
Prof Shattock, from the University of London, opposed any artificial change of title for the institutes of technology, whose distinctiveness needed to be preserved. Their blend of degree and non-degree work and their contribution to vocational training that is linked to regional economies should be retained, he said.
He said, however, that these institutions should be taken out of the hands-on control of the Department of Education and Science.
UCC President Prof Gerry Wrixon said that if Irish universities were to operate in the top percentage of OECD universities, the standards applied would have to be of global excellence.
John Walshe
Education Editor
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