Eyes on the future rather than a judgment of the past

The new UCC president, Dr Michael Murphy, faces the challenge of reviving the image of the college after a bruising period, marred by internal feuding. He talks to Seán Flynn, Education Editor

Dr Michael Murphy jokes that he likes to use his natural good humour as a management tool to get things done. His genial nature may help to explain how Murphy appears to be liked and respected by all sides in a university which had become a byword for rancour and division.

Murphy's predecessor, Dr Gerry Wrixon, was a hugely controversial figure. Last week, UCC's governing body endorsed a detailed report on the Wrixon era. This praised the former president for his vision and energy, but also blamed what it described as his brusque management style for some of UCC's internal wars.

Murphy, a 53 year-old native of Kilmichael, Co Cork, acknowledges how UCC has been damaged by the recurring controversies.

The reputation of the college was not helped, he says, by having some of "our internal debates" taking place outside UCC. "I would hope that the natural controversy that you must have in any university will be conducted within UCC."

That said, the use of external agencies to effect change may have been an indication that the college did not have the processes in place to allow people to believe they could change things. "I am committed to ensure all views on all matters can be dealt with internally. . . My job is to strengthen the internal process."

To this end, Murphy, a former dean of medicine at UCC, has already begun a review of management and governance at the university. British experts in higher education have been enlisted and a leading Dutch academic with expertise in this area has been appointed to the new governing authority. All of this will, he says, "helps us to design a new management structure in keeping with international best practice".

Murphy says the university has advanced enormously during the past decade but he is reluctant to provide a detailed assessment of the Wrixon era.

"If you're driving a car and insist in looking at the rear view mirror for most of the time, you are going to crash very quickly. I have practised medicine for 25 years and there is no more reliable instrument that the retrospectascope. No one can make a reliable judgment on decisions made by a predecessor because you can never be fully cognisant of all the factors which informed the decisions."

Murphy is anxious to signal that his appointment represents a clean slate, a break with the rancour of the past for everyone in UCC. He comes to the job with no baggage, with no preconceived notions about the various structures or the different people he will encounter.

"On my very first day here I said to people consider me as someone from the University of Wagadoodo. What I want to establish is whether or not the process and structures we have represent international best practice."

Anyone who is working here with any kind of baggage should have the opportunity to expunge themselves of these concerns. There will, he says, be a new way of doing business. But in return, he expects loyalty from staff and students to their colleagues.

"Anything I am doing is not a judgment on the past. The issue is how would the outside world expect us to be managing our affairs in 2007 as a first-class university."

UCC may have been scarred by its own civil war, but few doubt its status as one of the State's top universities. In recent years, it has routinely outperformed both Trinity and UCD in the battle to secure research funding. It continues to attract some of the best and brightest students from Cork's famed second-level schools.

Despite these advantages, Murphy does not understate the challenge facing UCC - or any other university - in meeting the "world-class" benchmark set for it by Government.

It is terrific, he says, to hear the Government espouse such a strong commitment to a world-class university system. Great strides have been made in the past decade, but we still have some distance to go, he says.

"In order to compete with the best in the world in 2007 we have an awful lot of catching up to do. . . We have a tendency to confuse income with wealth. We have high levels of income but we are not wealthy.

"I am a realist. We probably need another 20 years of sustained economic prosperity to be able to put in place the infrastructure that will give us the capacity to compete with the Harvards and the MITs of this world."

The stark reality, he says, is that Irish universities will struggle to deliver on the Government's target of a world-class university system without a world-class level of resources - despite the world-beating status of individual academics or university departments.

At UCC, for example, some 50 per cent of the accommodation used for teaching is sub-standard.

Murphy believes tuition fees must be reintroduced to allow Irish colleges to compete with their international rivals. It makes sense in his view to ask those who have secured a high level of disposable income and enjoyed a low tax regime to give something back to a university system "which is so critical for our future". He also wants more tax breaks to facilitate a US-style commitment to philanthropy in Ireland.

In recent years, Murphy has spent much of his time in places such as Signapore and Malaysia, as part of the drive to bring international students to Ireland.

"It is very evident to me that the first thing a Malaysian student does when considering education abroad is to look at the international rankings. . . the Times Higher Education rankings and so on. They look at us and we are not where we need to be to convince the cream of international mobile students. We do have a number of departments operating at such a level that they can attract students - but at a sectoral level we are not where we need to be.

"To achieve progress we are going to have to do it on a unified basis. We should be looking at something like a federated university of Ireland, where each of us puts forward a portfolio of disciplines where we want to be be a contributor to a world-class Irish university.

"If we're to be competitive, I don't believe we can support seven, and certainly not more, institutions that would be world class. A federated university of Ireland, with a coherent system, working together, may be able to compete at the highest level.

"We are talking about a new Irish university brand," he says.