Madam, - There are three things the Government can do if it wants world class universities without paying what the world's leading universities are paid:
1. We are below critical mass - every engineering department in the country is less than half the size of a typical department elsewhere which is highly inefficient. Shut down some departments and make the rest bigger.
2. Introduce a transparent funding policy - there is a cloud of uncertainty over what formula, if any, is used by the HEA to fund the universities. We could plan much better if we knew the basis of the funding.
3. Stop meddling - one gets the impression that the Government's vision of the future of Irish education does not extend beyond four years. Introduce a clear unambiguous strategy and a multi-annual funding envelope that will allow us to proceed with long-term strategic planning. -Yours, etc.,
EUGENE OBRIEN,
Professor of Civil Engineering,
UCD Civil Engineering
Department,
University College Dublin,
Earlsfort Terrace,
Dublin 2.
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Madam, - It is very regrettable that the Minister for Education continues to berate the universities about accountability, quality, cost of third-level education and access for the disadvantaged. On the contrary he should be praising them for the low cost per graduate and high degree standards: our tuition costs are half that in the United Kingdom and one fifth that in the United States, and it is widely acknowledged that the standards of the degrees of the main universities are comparable with the best internationally.
It is misleading of the Minister to state that the universities get a "high level of taxpayer support" (February 28th). While it is correct to say that 80 per cent of university funding comes from the state, one of the highest levels in the OECD countries, the absolute contribution by the government is quite low in comparison with other developed countries.
"The vast bulk of funding for the third level sector comes from the pockets of ordinary taxpayers, who will never set foot in a university even once in their lives," according to the Minister. It is difficult to reconcile this statement with the fact that there is a 50 per cent-plus participation rate at third-level and that most income tax is contributed by the middle and higher professional social categories. Blaming the universities for the relatively low level of access to universities by students from poor backgrounds is hardly consistent with a 12 per cent cutback in the 2004 budget.
It may be instructive to learn that some of the (US) Ivy League universities have just recently decided to stop charging any fees to parents of students with an annual income less than $40,000. Selected, high-performing students will therefore have free tuition at Harvard University, for example, made possible by interest from its massive endowments of $15 billion. It is unfair to ask the Irish universities to compete at this level and to additionally expect them to take in low achieving, low income students without providing or suggesting realistic ways of fully funding such students. -Yours, etc.,
PROF. JAMES HEFFRON,
MRIA,
Department of Biochemistry,
University College,
Cork