Art in the right place: A president bows out

After almost 10 years as UCD president, Art Cosgrove will retire at the endof the year. In a wide-ranging interview, he reflects on the task of runningthe State's largest university

'Forty years. . . that's a long time. Forty years, mmmm." Art Cosgrove is in reflective mood as his eyes range across the campus from his office, high in the admin block. His life-long engagement with UCD began 40 years ago - when he was appointed as a junior lecturer, aged 23. With his big smile and his friendly bearing, he gives the impression of someone who has no real regrets. His presidency won't actually end until January 2004, but with the publicity about his successor, people are already sending him retirement cards. It is all very strange, he muses.

Ask him his achievements in the job and he immediately starts talking about the students and the staff. He is proud of his teaching award scheme and of the new promotion structure, which sees academics being assessed by their peers under set criteria. It beats the old system where one lecturer was in ferocious competition with another - and there was blood all over the campus.

He has the bearing of a rural parish priest who is glad to have made things better for his flock. "Look at the Student Centre; it was promised since 1969, but it has now become a reality." He also beams with satisfaction when he talks about the new veterinary college and the strides that UCD is making in the research area.

Art Cosgrove only steps into defensive mode once during the interview, when reminded that nine of the top 10 feeder schools for the college are fee-paying. Is UCD serving the wider society or just the well-heeled D4 set?

"We don't just have D4 accents around here. Over 50 per cent of our students come from outside Dublin. Over 60 per cent of our scholarship students are from outside Dublin. The image portrayed of us as the Dublin 4 college is unfair. We have students from every part of Ireland."

But what about poorer students? "There is a real problem there. People talk about the decline in the number of Leaving Cert students over the next decade as a problem for the third-level sector. I prefer to see it as an opportunity, a chance for us to reach out in a real way to the disadvantaged, the mature student, the student with disabilities and so on."

On fees, he says the notion of bringing back fees and diverting funds to the disadvantaged sounds fine in principle, but it is fraught with difficulty. "How do identify who should and who should not pay fees? You already have a situation where the current grant scheme is not as effective as it should be in targeting students with real needs. Would fees add to the problems?"

Art Cosgrove is more convinced by the case for student loans, where it is the income of the graduate, rather than that of their parents, which is the starting point. There may be difficulties, he says, with people defaulting on loans, with some students being worried about taking on debt, with students emigrating. But the principle, he says, is sound. If the taxpayer subsidises someone's education and he or she enjoys a high income, it seems fair that there is a claw-back, he says.

I ask him about recent comments from IDA chief Sean Dorgan that the education system is too introspective and not always connected to wider economic and social needs. He welcomes Dorgan's contribution, but is not in full agreement. "The role of the third-level sector in helping to transform our economy in the past decade is now acknowledged by everyone. But it was not always so. I can remember a time when people were a great deal less certain about our role. Our job was to keep filling up places and to take in more students. Nowadays, we occupy a pivotal role in national life."

Despite the recent cutbacks, he speaks glowingly of successive governments which have identified the importance of the universities and invested to an unprecedented degree in research, in infrastructure and in staff. There is still some way to travel, he says. "Ireland's investment in research and development is still low compared to our competitors. Government can only do so much. A greater onus will fall on the business community itself to make a contribution."

Looking ahead, he predicts there will, be something of a shake-out in the third-level sector over the next decade. Different colleges - particularly in the Institute of Technology sector - will have to develop their own niche. Maybe some universities will also need to do the same thing. We cannot all, for example, be doing the same kind of research and chasing the same funding, he says.

But the good news, as he sees it, is there will always be a place for a big, sprawling, multi-faculty university like UCD. He beams with pride (again) when he talks about the new Conway Institute on bio-sciences and how five separate facilities are working together. This is his idea of what a great university should be doing - facilitating talented people to work together for a common goal.

Afterwards, he opens a cabinet and offers chicken sandwiches and some flasks of tea. He looks out again towards the students in the library and the science block across the way. You have the sense that he is going to miss this place.