On Wednesday a conference organised by the Senate of the National University of Ireland discussed external pressures on the university system, emanating from such diverse sources as government, business, students and, indirectly, parents.
While the debate ranged over many issues arising from these external pressures - or as one speaker preferred to call them, neutrally, "external influences" - the fact that, by chance, the conference took place in the immediate aftermath of the publication of the Government's Book of Estimates inevitably focused attention on the financial provision for higher education in the year 2004.
Within an "envelope" of spending negotiated by the Minister for Education, Noel Dempsey, with the Minister for Finance, involving a relatively generous 12 per cent overall increase in current finance for education, priority has been given by him to primary, and to a lesser degree second-level, education.
Now, subject to not undermining the higher education sector upon which the Government is relying heavily as a tool of economic development, this is, of course, an entirely legitimate political choice.
Indeed, given past underfunding of the primary sector in particular such a shift in priorities by a Minister rightly concerned about social disadvantage is understandable.
However, the announcement at a point in time several months into the current academic year that universities are to receive no increase in their grants while facing an exceptional rise in pay costs, almost all of it imposed by Government action, has created an impossible situation for this sector of the education system.
Because of a combination of the impact of normal increments, the national pay agreement, benchmarking, the operation of the Protection of Employees (Part-Time Work) Act 2001, the technicians' award and the application of the A1 PRSI rate to new employees, the cumulative impact of these externally imposed pay factors has been estimated to increase the universities' payroll by 13 per cent in 2004.
In this connection it has to be noted that the Buckley report has already increased the salaries of professors, so a decision to refuse to implement the benchmarking increases for other staff is scarcely practicable.
With pay responsible for 73 per cent of the universities' costs, and non-pay costs estimated to rise by 5.5 per cent because of factors such as rising insurance and utilities costs, the overall cost increase in 2004 is estimated at 11 per cent and is certainly unlikely to be much below 10 per cent.
The unprecedented abandonment by the Government of its responsibility in the higher education sector for financing pay increases that it itself either negotiated or decided upon, parallels the way in which it has recently dealt with local authorities.
But at least local authorities have the possibility, however unpopular that may be, of raising revenue by increasing local charges.
But eight years ago the Government took over responsibility for paying all university fees on behalf of students and, despite the Minister for Education's personal willingness to contemplate the restoration of student fees for university education, he was recently forced by political opposition within his own party and Government to abandon this idea.
Thus it appears that the present intention is that universities are not to be permitted to raise additional income by charging students an additional fee over and above that paid on their behalf by the Government.
In any event, it simply would not be possible to start imposing student fees for the current academic year several months after that year has started.
Given that the majority of universities' costs are fixed in the short term at least, it is clearly totally unrealistic of the Minister to expect them to reduce their volume of activity overnight by 10 per cent in order to stay within the 2003 financial provision.
By ignoring the paramount need to ensure that policy decisions are implemented in such a way, and at such a pace, as to enable adjustments to be made without serious disruption, the Minister has threatened the viability of the university system.
Given the relatively small proportion of educational spending absorbed by the universities - less than one-eighth - all this could have been avoided if he had been content to move a little more gradually with his quite legitimate priority shift in favour of the other education sectors.
In making such a precipitate priority switch, one would have expected the Minister to have regard to the main thrust of the Government's economic policy, as enunciated by the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste.
Both of these have recently proclaimed that the future of our economy, and thus of our society, depends upon the development of higher education and research as they key to putting "Ireland at the forefront of Europe's knowledge-driven society".
On July 8th last the Tánaiste, introducing the Report by the Expert Group on Future Skills Needs, said that the Government's policy of "concentration on higher-value activities will require greater numbers of highly qualified graduates".
She added: "We must give priority to reversing the trend (towards) declining numbers opting for third-level courses in engineering and science".
Against that background, and quite apart from the particular problem posed by the precipitate way in which the Minister for Education has moved drastically to cut the universities' real resources overnight, the scale of his underlying reallocation of resources away from higher education suggests a quite extraordinary incoherence in Government policy.
It is not surprising that in these circumstances Dr Don Thornhill, chairman of the Higher Education Authority, speaking in a personal capacity at the NUI conference last Wednesday, was moved to propose that, in view of the current third-level funding crisis, consideration be given to the provision of student loans, repayable out of income in later years, so as to enable students to pay for university education after three initial years of free tuition.
I have to say that this is an idea that I have favoured for years past, because such a scheme would reflect the fact that university students attending courses of more than three years tend to derive from their more prolonged studies a significantly increased financial benefit during their later careers.
Clearly the Minister's policy switch now requires an urgent rethink of the university fees issue along the lines suggested by Dr Thornhill.