KAREN MAYE,
Madam, - It is timely that the Minister for Education, Mr Dempsey, has begun an inquiry into the future shape of tertiary education (The Irish Times, December 11th). Among OECD countries Ireland is almost unique in its failure critically and seriously to address the future of this sector. It was regrettable that we had to turn to an outsider, the Australian Prof Skilbeck, to review Irish universities. While his report had some interesting things to say, it was a rather bland document that could have been written about any country's third-level system. It was remarkable how few references it could make to any critical educational thought in Ireland itself.
It is to be hoped the forthcoming review will be based on a realistic appraisal of the social and economic trajectory of the country, rather than outmoded notions of "tradition". Your report suggests that the institutes of technology were seen by some to be drifting into the forbidden territory of the "humanities" and that this was in some way counterposed to the provision of "jobs for graduates". This reflects a very narrow and mistaken view of the emergent innovation economy and the types of skills it requires.
To take just one example, computer games now form one of the world's most significant entertainment industries: a major source of games designers is to be found among Fine Art graduates. Ironically perhaps, apart from the NCAD, all of the Republic's fine art courses are to be found within the so-called "technological sector", where painters can literally rub shoulders with computer programmers and electronics engineers.
Last summer the Department of Education blocked the provision of two academically accredited degree courses in Sligo IT: one in the Performing Arts and one in Applied Archaeology. With a cursory glance these courses might easily have been labelled "humanities" and so perhaps inappropriate in some way for an institute of technology. But in fact the former programme dealt extensively with technical theatre production - a field in which there is no degree-level course on the island - while the latter was a science course that aimed to teach the specific technological skills related to archaeological practice. Each field is an area of major employment growth, suffers from a lack of relevant education and training, and is highly dependent on educational institutions outside the State to provide us with skilled personnel. The relevance and employment potential of each course was reflected in the hundreds of students who chose them in last year's CAO round.
The very success of the ITs has lain in their failure to abide by "tradition". If they had adhered to their "traditional" remit they would still be teaching the Leaving Certificate and would not have grown into the important sites of teaching and research that they are today.
Furthermore the ITs, based as they are in regional and now "gateway" and "hub" locations, have provided a counter-balance to the monopolisation of knowledge production by the metropolitan universities. To attempt to put the genie back into the bottle, and to suggest that the regions are fit only to provide computer technicians or secretaries for city-based companies, is to fly in the face of recent trends towards a more decentralised and democratic society.
By all means reshape the country's tertiary system - but do so on the basis of an intelligent assessment of reality, not an outmoded and mistaken notion of where the boundaries of learning should be drawn. - Yours, etc.,
Dr PERRY SHARE,
Head of Humanities,
Institute of Technology,
Sligo.
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Madam, - In your Editorial of December 10th you ask: "Is it right that the ordinary working-class taxpayers should subsidise the better-off to achieve an expensive university education?"
I have not being living in Ireland for the past few months so maybe something has passed me by, but do the so-called "better off" not pay taxes any more? As far as I knew they paid the highest rates, yet claimed the least from social welfare and public health!
Should this still be the case, then in answer to your question, if it is right for someone, no matter how well off, to pay for a social welfare system they will never make a demand on, medical cards from which they themselves will never benefit, and tribunals from which they will get no satisfaction, then surely it is right for people to subsidise something that is so fundamental to society as education. - Yours, etc.,
KAREN MAYE,
Department of Medicine
and Therapeutics,
Aberdeen University,
Scotland.