Who should be in command and control of higher education?

The higher-education institutions are going to have to cut another €25 million from their collective funding due to Budget provisions, but that is nothing new. The State’s percentage share in the cost of running our third-level sector has been in decline for years. Yet if this withdrawal of funding by the State persists it won’t take too many years before it becomes a minority shareholder in the funding of these institutions.

Does this make a difference? Can’t the universities dig up the shortfall using their own money from philanthropists and research awards and bequests? It certainly does make a difference if the State expects to continue to be a decision-maker in how the third-level sector is run.

Currently the Department of Education and Skills calls all of the important shots related to the running of the third-level sector, even down to the number of staff an institution is allowed to have. In the absence of tuition fees, the institutions have to chase any non-Exchequer cash they can find to help fill gaps and keep things running.

University College Dublin president Dr Hugh Brady aptly described it recently as "State command and control", with the current major funder – the Government – exercising ultimate control over how the universities conduct their business. But should it be allowed to continue with command and control once it slips below the 50 per cent mark for funding?

Brady’s view is that each institutions should be “empowered with the operational flexibility and autonomy” to run their affairs and pay their way in the world, a view he stated most recently on the release of the Times Higher Education (THE) world university rankings which saw UCD making gains. Brady argues that allowing this autonomy would be in the interests of both the Government and the universities. Command and control in the higher education sector does not work he says and actually impedes the sector’s ability to compete internationally for the best staff and researchers and the top rated graduates and postdoctoral researchers. The current situation meant that UCD was attempting to succeed in this internationalised environment with both its hands tied behind its back, Brady maintains.

Trinity College Dublin unfortunately went down in the same THE rankings, but the message coming from the university's dean of research, Prof Vinny Cahill, was very much the same. He described the slide as a "wake-up call" not just for Trinity but for the country's highereducation sector as a whole. The State and the institutions needed to co-invest in all the institutions if we were to compete in a globalised education sector.

There was no contradiction between the two over why sustained investment in the sector was important – jobs and economic growth. The Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation has repeatedly made the point that our fiscal future is dependent on being able to participate in the international knowledge economy. This is where the future money is and with it the jobs and exports and these benefits arise from research and high tech enterprises.

The focus of the research activity that can help us become players in this marketplace already exists – in the labs and research centres based in our third level institutions. These institutions in turn link with companies – who also already exist here – to conduct joint research that can deliver the ideas and discoveries that in turn can make jobs.

The companies won’t be interested for long if the higher education sector can’t pay its way and struggles to retain both high standards and the reputation that comes from that. Reputation buys a lot of interest and attention and of course money. Look at educational “brands” such as MIT and Cambridge, Harvard and Oxford, and how reputation can pull in young researchers and internationally know academics.

Cahill also argues that state
investment in can drive societal and economic renewal so if you want to create a future-proof economy you have to
invest in education given it supports society and it supports the economy.
He too called for a "co-investment
arrangement" that could help the higher education sector to compete and to fulfil its role in job creation, particularly in innovation.

The question is how to achieve this brave new world? The Government pleads inability to pay and urges all to survive on less, yet doing so may kill off the very thing needed to help us out of this economic mess.

The spotlight immediately turns to the imposition of tuition fees as a way out of the problem, but this will be met by vigorous protest not just by students but by their parents and also politicians who would fear the electoral consequences if they came down in favour of such a thing. So the higher-education sector will continue to be starved of funding, with all the attendant risks of such a one-tracked approach.

A simple answer for the problem
comes from the department over in Marlborough Street. Its response to another €25 million coming out of the higher-education sector was short
and sweet. "The Higher Education Institutions are expected to continue to deliver the same level of services by more prudent management of their existing cash balances as they are doing at present."