Pioneering spirit makes for a bright future

Professor Ferdinand von Prondzynski, president of Dublin City University, looks back at the institution's 25 years at the cutting edge of a new direction in third-level education and writes a prescription for the decade to come

This month, DCU is celebrating its 25th anniversary: in November 1980 the then National Institute for Higher Education (NIHE) in Glasnevin admitted its first students. These students were embarking on an adventure: they had applied to be admitted to an institution which, at the time of their application, didn't even have an established campus, and had lots of promise but no track record. They were entrepreneurs, as were the staff who had agreed to work for this new and unconventional third-level institute.

These staff and students represented the future in a bleak past. In Ireland, this was the time of high unemployment, high emigration, high inflation, low expectations, and low growth. To compound all that, the country was about to embark on a bout of social navel-gazing, tearing itself apart in particular on questions of lifestyle and sexual morality. At the time the third-level colleges were admirable in many ways and contained dedicated people, but they were traditional in outlook, trying to do university things with the resources of secondary schools.

Twenty-five years later all has changed, both in higher education and in the country as a whole. Although many factors prompted the change, DCU was a major contributor. During those years, we pioneered a number of innovations which have since been adopted by other institutions - from work placements for students, through modular interdisciplinary programmes, through structural reform creating executive faculties, to access for disadvantaged groups. We graduated a disproportionate number of the skilled people who were the engine that powered the Celtic Tiger, and we identified research areas critical to the next wave of innovation.

In other words, DCU did not just do the right things for the 1980s, but also prepared the ground in the 1980s for what needed to be done in the 1990s and in the current decade. We exercised "foresight" - identifying ahead of time what the future trends were likely to be, and then taking the early decisions to ensure that we would be able to drive through the innovation needed to exploit those trends in the national interest. Now in 2005, we need to do the same again for the next 25 years. This is not just a task for DCU - or even for the whole higher education sector - but for Ireland.

As a nation, we know what issues we need to take into account. We know that, in the absence of unforeseeable disasters, we are never again going to be a low-cost economy. We know that our capacity to increase national productivity by growing the labour force has demographic limitations. We know that our infrastructure lags behind our economic development and our national prosperity. We know we are too reliant on construction to fuel growth. We know that gaining competitive advantage through low taxation remains vital but is under threat from other countries, who either want to put pressure on us to raise taxes or who are increasingly following our example and even undercutting us. However, this cocktail of self-awareness doesn't add up to a new national strategy - it is more like a source of rising national angst.

Those who have attempted to paint a picture of future success have often tended to work it around an image of an Ireland that is home to high-value technological innovation and scientific discovery. During the first couple of years of this decade the talk was all about "moving up the value chain". This prompted some major national initiatives, including the establishment of Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) and a re-think by the Industrial Development Agency (IDA) about where to focus its resources. But for all the near-consensus of this approach, there is remarkably little clarity, at least in public discourse, as to what the "value chain" that we are supposed to be climbing up really consists of, and I suspect that comparatively few people who urge us to practise innovation actually have the remotest idea what that means.

Although analysis is central to successful strategic planning, there is more to strategy than a good analysis. In fact, we may be at risk of piling on so much analysis that the sheer volume of information and evaluation may be stopping us from acting coherently. Strategy is about creating focus and adopting priorities - knowing what to develop and support, and what to let go, and why.

As a country, we know quite well what some of the priorities are for us right now. In summary they are: (a) to identify and then focus on areas in which Ireland can lead the world in innovation and development - and to be effective, we cannot choose many of these, as we are too small a country to be good at everything; (b) to ensure that we have an integrated and inclusive society, in which there are no ghettos or excluded communities; (c) to secure a world class infrastructure; (d) to have a population which knows about, is sympathetic to, and uses science and technology; (e) to encourage and value initiative and enterprise; (f) to move away from a society in which the professions are seen as more rewarding than entrepreneurship or than working for creative or productive organisations (we need fewer lawyers and more entrepreneurs) and (g) to become less risk-averse, and more forgiving of occasional failure.

These are all objectives to which DCU is committed, and in relation to which it intends to show leadership and initiative. We have already decided to undergo an assessment programme in which we will honestly and openly review the quality of our research, and in which we will also take advice in identifying new trends and future technologies to which we can make a central contribution. We shall use this information to channel our resources and prioritise our actions.

It is worth noting in passing that the regulatory and resourcing environment in which universities operate is no longer appropriate for these national ambitions - and there are welcome signs that this is recognised by Government. The current system is in many ways more appropriate for universities in a centrally-planned economy than for one driven by market innovation. Universities have, over recent years, seriously tackled issues of quality and accountability. It will be necessary to reconsider, over the short to medium term, whether our objectives can be met within the framework of wholly inadequate public funding we have had to date, and what steps need to be taken to modernise not just the universities, but the public agencies and policies which support or restrain them. DCU will be vocal in this debate.

One of the things I discovered on joining DCU as its second president - in succession to the founding president, Dr Danny O'Hare - was that we still employ an extraordinary number of those innovative staff who were in NIHE in the early 1980s. I am in awe of what they, and those who subsequently joined, have achieved. We have many exciting challenges ahead, as has Ireland, but for now, I am proud to wish us all in the university, and all our students, alumni and staff, a very happy birthday!