The fact that the recently announced research merger between Trinity and UCD has been negatively received by the other universities is not surprising. While the language of “civil war” is somewhat excessive, it is clear that a policy and political decision to concentrate Government research spending heavily (if not exclusively) in these two universities has now been taken.
In many senses, however, the decision and its critique are both equally flawed. Universities per se do not do research. Rather they provide an institutional context and support structure for individuals and groups of researchers within them.
Focusing the research spend on an institutional basis runs the risk of misdirecting it in two ways: it can benefit underperforming elements within the funded institutions, and it can miss out on high-performing units within the unfunded ones.
In Ireland today, a better way of rationalising the research spend would suggest either the creation of a specialist higher education institution(s) or specialist research institutes outside of, rather than within, the governance and institutional structure of the parent universities. The creation of a stand-alone specialist entity as a spin-off fourth-level provider from the existing HEIs in Ireland, under their collective governance, is logically if not politically the most feasible way of realising the benefits of rationalisation.
Whatever about such concerns,
it is to be greatly hoped that the ambitious aspirations regarding the economic and commercial impact of the merger are realised. These include the creation of up to 30,000 jobs in spin-off companies in an “innovation corridor” stretching from Belfield to College Green. Considering that we are battling the most serious economic crisis since the foundation of the State, it is important that these ambitions are quickly realised.
This is unlikely to happen. There is a poorly developed innovation culture in Irish higher education. Irish academics have previously gained little reward or recognition within their own community for engaging in applied as opposed to basic research, or for bringing their ideas to the marketplace.
Indeed, throughout the 1990s research funding was singularly geared towards basic research – that is, the advance of knowledge rather than its application or commercialisation. While this has changed in recent years, Irish research culture continues to be overly supply-driven. This contrasts markedly with the research culture in the US, which is far more demand driven, led by organisations such as NASA, the American army and the American pharmaceutical industry.
One would be considerably more sanguine on the likely economic returns of this proposed merger and of the research spend generally if the spending was driven by the urgent and long-term development challenges with which Irish society is now confronted.
In today’s straitened economic circumstances, the Government should be much more explicit on the returns it needs from the research community. These might now include:
i) Marshalling the best economic intelligence available in Ireland and outside of it towards addressing the banking and the global financial crisis and their impact on Ireland
ii) Identifying ways of reducing the cost base of internationally traded goods and services produced in Ireland
iii) Developing appropriate products and production methods that can rebuild Irish manufacturing
iv) Identifying and developing clean technology lines, in which Ireland has innate competitive advantages in such areas as food, the marine, renewable energy, and the reduction and recapture of carbon emissions
The challenge, therefore, for Irish researchers is to respond to a national demand to create new products and processes that can be developed in Ireland and sold globally. This is the new imperative of research funding in the areas of science and technology. It needs to be seen as the only acceptable outcome.
Tom Collins is head of education at NUI Maynooth
