University lecturers have warned that third-level institutions are coming under pressure to become "profit-making entities" controlled by powerful international investors.
The lecturers said there was a growing possibility of transnational corporations gaining dominance in the university sector, traditionally part of the public service.
One reason for this was that universities now had to raise their own funds in addition to their State grant and adopt the strategies of global commerce, the lecturers said. This was "both undermining the role of our institutions and the quality of the services which they provide."
The Irish Federation of University Teachers (IFUT) said: "The effects of deregulation and making universities responsible for raising their own funding has promoted increased competition between universities to seek new sources of income and to pursue foreign markets."
The president of IFUT, Ms Maureen Killeavy, said multinational corporations were exerting major direct and indirect influences on universities. "The future danger of this type of influence is of growing concern as governments become less able to meet the increasing financial costs of funding education," she said.
The current impetus to deregulate the third-level and education sectors generally, if not checked, would result in a form of "academic imperialism" where powerful investors representing the most monopolistic cultures would predominate.
The comments from IFUT highlight long-standing opposition among many in the academic community to increasing commercial pressures. The Republic's main universities now have international fund-raising arms, and many capital projects are financed by wealthy international and domestic donors.
The chairman of the Higher Education Authority, Dr Don Thornhill, has outlined other challenges facing the sector, with courses possibly being franchised out over the Internet.
One example was that courses and teaching materials from respected universities such as Harvard might be sold to students in the Republic over the Internet. Irish universities could also seek to get involved in these projects.
Ms Killeavy said these developments could have benefits for the Republic, but could be damaging for developing states without the resources to develop their own education systems.
She said the staffing of universities was also a problem for the future. Cost-cutting measures could be taken to extremes, resulting in a contraction of permanent positions.
The pupil-teacher ratio in Irish universities was the third-highest of the 29 member-states of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), she said. The current rate of 19.2:1 needed to come down to 14:1.