The cutbacks in the university sector undermine the State's international competitiveness, college heads warned yesterday. The heads of the seven universities also warned that the issue of college fees is certain to resurface as the colleges come to terms with a growing funding crisis.
In a pre-Budget press conference, the Conference of Heads of Irish Universities painted a bleak picture of a sector which is enduring severe budgetary cutbacks.
One university president, Dr Gerry Wrixon of UCC, warned that both students and academic staff would take flight to properly funded universities elsewhere if funding problems were not addressed.
Dr Seamus Smyth, president of NUI Maynooth, said there was a clear "disconnect" between the rhetoric about the drive towards a knowledge-based economy built on human capital and the current severe underfunding in the university sector.
Dr Wrixon said more than €50 million was available from the private sector to fund research, providing the State matched the finance. However, this money could not be sourced. What does that say about the lack of "joined up" political thinking, he asked.
A report commissioned by the conference of university heads from Farrell Grant Sparks consultants shows that State investment in the sector is poor by international standards.
The State now has one of the highest staff-student ratios in the OECD and is in the bottom third when it comes to spending per student. It ranks 16th out of 28 OECD nations when it comes to spending on the universities when compared to its GDP per capita.
TCD Provost Dr John Hegarty said this poor level of investment was no longer good enough if the State wanted to position itself at the cutting edge.
"Ireland will not be out in front if the universities are not out in front," he said.
The university sector is still coming to terms with last year's budget which saw severe cuts in capital spending and an effective freeze on day-to-day spending. The colleges have also suffered from the "pause" in the current research programme, the Programme for Research in Third-Level Institutions.
To add to their woes, the most generous private source of funding, Atlantic Philanthropies, run by Irish American billionaire, Mr Chuck Feeney, recently announced it was shifting its funds to other projects in the Republic and Northern Ireland.
The conference of university heads estimates that direct State support per student has fallen in real terms by over €1,200, when the abolition of fees is taken into account. At a press conference yesterday, the university heads said the issue of tuition fees would resurface next year when the OECD issues its report on the third-level sector. It is widely expected that the OECD report - due next summer - will recommend the reintroduction of college fees.
But the Minister for Education, Mr Dempsey, has said the fees issue is off the political agenda for the foreseeable future.
Last night Dr Smyth said the university sector was just about coping with the budgetary cutbacks by boosting productivity.
"But we are now at the limits where cracks are beginning to show. We are now very concerned about the impact these stealth cuts are having on quality. If our sector is now competing with the best, we will not attract world-class teachers and researchers," he warned.