The de Buitleir Report on third-level education is probably the most unwelcome document to reach the desk of a Government Minister for a long time. The report challenges the Government's visionary strategy to adapt the Irish education system to our economic and social needs in the 21st century.
It proposes an absolutely minimal increase in third-level provision, based on a startlingly low level of ambition for the Irish people. This vision would relegate Ireland to an also-ran position in a world league where with the right strategy we can be leaders.
Accepting this report would undermine one of the present Government's most significant achievements. More: accepting it would turn the clock back to the 1980s. Then, because of enforced budgetary restrictions, we starved our education system of resources. Infrastructure at primary level crumbled, lack of remedial teaching led to a large number of drop-outs, while under-investment in university research hindered the nation's potential in a way we are only now scrambling to put right.
In the 1980s our vision was defined not by the need to maximise the country's economic potential, nor by the democratic imperative to let each person develop his or her individual talents to the full. Instead, we had to limit our vision to "what resources permit". As those resources dwindled, our ambitions were forced to shrink in step.
But since 1997, we have seen a genuine rebirth. There is a nationwide recognition that education is the key to our future, and that fulfilment in education is a fundamental democratic right. This Government not alone recognises the importance of investment in education, but puts its money where its mouth is.
The time is therefore ripe to develop a long-term strategy for education at third level. My hope was that the de Buitleir report would help us define an ambitious strategy, related to the improved financial position and the new confidence about our ability to compete in the world. Unfortunately the de Buitleir report is not such a strategy. To understand why, we must recall how it came to be commissioned.
In 1995 a HEA broadly-based review group on third-level provision forecast the need for a higher number of third-level places than de Buitleir now proposes. But the Department of Finance dissented on two main grounds. One was the old refrain of "resources don't permit". The other was that a lower birth rate would mean fewer people doing the Leaving and therefore, they argued, fewer people should go on to third level.
The resources argument was collapsing even as it was being made, as the Celtic Tiger began to flex its muscles. The participation argument ignored the fact that while numbers might be decreasing, the expectations of students and parents were continuing to increase, and in a democratic society could not be denied - as to close the shutters when only middle-class aspirations had been met would be to perpetuate the inequality in third-level participation which was already a scandal.
Yet the de Buitleir committee was set up in 1996, in an attempt to produce a more palatable answer. The committee was made up largely of civil servants, with no representation of third-level providers.
This may explain the report's apparent confusion over mature students, where the committee seem to think the typical model should be a part-time evening student. In fact, the most practical and desirable model is for part-time day students. This is an important matter, as increasing the intake of mature students is a key way to achieve both our economic and our social aims.
The report also seems to display a lack of awareness as to the correlation between undergraduate provision and research capability. As a nation we have only just come to realise the critical economic importance of university research, and are busy making up lost ground. But growth in research depends not only on funds but on a supply of future research students, and this is reflected inadequately in the de Buitleir view.
However, the report's main failings are strategic. What it ignores almost completely is that planning for future provision at third level must rest on two pillars of equal strength.
One is our developing economy. We can choose either to be a leader or an also-ran in the information era.
The other is the moral requirement flowing from a republican, democratic society. We can create equal opportunity for all, or we can allow to continue the disadvantage that creates second-class citizens of a large segment of our people.
On the social pillar, I take the view that we have no right to stand in the way of anyone who has the necessary abilities, ambition and energy to become a graduate. The de Buitleir report takes a minimalist approach to the problem of disadvantage, and I believe this not enough in either social or economic terms.
On the economic pillar, my view is that we should pitch for the top. Instead of seeking to squeeze into the top quarter of developed countries (which could leave us in only seventh position), I believe we should go for the leadership slot. For the first time in history, we have the ability and the means to be a world leader. We can be the best educated people in the world, and reap immense benefits from that.
To settle for as low as the seventh position in a world league where we can be first is to sell ourselves and future generations a long way short. We no longer have the excuse that we cannot afford it. We can afford it. And we should.
The Government, on its performance to date, clearly does not need to be told these things. But it may need to have its courage rekindled in the face of this backward-looking report which, if applied, would undermine the current vision and the considerable progress already made.
Dr Danny O'Hare, a former president of DCU, is chairman of the Expert Group on Future Skills Needs.
