My son-in-law, a science lecturer in a Welsh university, was on the picket line with colleagues the week before last. The union was protesting about the introduction of local pay determination, in place of a national framework, writes Martin Mansergh.
While top-up fees are to be introduced in England, after Tony Blair narrowly got them through the Commons, the Welsh First Minister, Rhodri Morgan, has not yet agreed to them in Wales.
The funding of third-level education and research is an issue all over Europe. In Germany, the concept of élite universities is an element of a reform package causing Chancellor Schröder difficulty with his party. A suggested alternative is élite faculties.
American economic dominance is built on many factors, including cheap oil. The many well-funded and endowed top universities reward their staff, have excellent facilities, and attract the best of what the rest of the world has to offer. The US has few hang-ups about élitism, but values equal opportunity.
The connection between research capacity and the economy is well established. This week the British Chancellor, Gordon Brown, announced that his government was giving major spending priority to research, to give the British economy a leading edge.
Irish third-level education has made immense progress over 30 years. The new universities, the RTCs, and the huge expansion embarked on for strategic economic reasons by Mary O'Rourke and Charles Haughey from 1989 on have increased third-level participation to close to 50 per cent. In the 1960s, the proportion was in single figures.
Thanks in large part to Irish-American philanthropy, in partnership with the colleges and the Government, impressive new facilities have gone up on all our university campuses during the past 15 years. A handful of leading Irish businessmen have also been handsome benefactors.
Medieval magnates founded colleges for the salvation of their immortal souls. Henry VII's mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort, is still commemorated as the original benefactor of St John's College, Cambridge, as Cardinal Wolsey is in Christ Church, Oxford. If those who have made unprecedented wealth in the years of the Celtic Tiger wish to be remembered with honour centuries hence, there are still few better ways to achieve this than by endowing a college building.
Wealthy patriots have contributed much to America's educational pre-eminence at third level. Much of Ireland's recent progress comes from the same source.
Until the late 1990s, Irish research was poorly funded. Science Foundation Ireland and the creation of a parallel Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences have transformed all that.
Nonetheless, there is concern that academic conditions of employment are not attractive enough to hold a sufficient share of the best young postgraduates. Initial tenure is very uncertain, involving a succession of short-term contracts. Further on, the relative earning power and status of those who achieve distinction in their profession have fallen. It is not easy to compete with other more immediately rewarding careers. Even within academe, Ireland will have to compete not just with America, but in future with better-funded universities in Britain.
What are the solutions? There is a short-term funding problem, which I expect to see eased next year. In this year's Estimates, there were large increases in maintenance grants and in research funding. Something had to give, which was the standstill (and in real terms reduction) in the day-to-day funding of universities. Next year, there should be space to ease the financial squeeze.
Maybe the OECD will recommend the reintroduction of fees, which university heads never wanted abolished. But, a bit like property tax or charging by meter for domestic water supply, rational economic arguments are likely to be swamped by massive public resistance to change. I would not burden young people facing into high mortgages with repaying student loans.
Despite the picture conjured up of working class people subsidising the better off to go to college, most tax is paid by the middle classes, whose children benefit from college. It is already expensive to put a child through college and parents are not willingly going to accept on "public interest" grounds an additional €3-4,000 a year for four years, doubling what they are already paying.
Tony Blair could do it, because Labour's constituency is different, a lower proportion are going to college, and because the British electoral system produces unassailable parliamentary majorities.
The TUI proposal to add 2 per cent to corporation tax and ring-fencing the revenue is unlikely to be entertained by Government. Trade unions react strongly to any attempts to worsen working conditions, and firms operating here on the basis of a 12.5 per cent corporation tax would react equally badly to a 2 per cent levy. The basic tenet of Government economic policy is to hold tax rates down and generate greater revenue through resulting buoyancy, not to take the easy counter-productive short-cut of higher taxes.
Other parts of our education system matter, as does equity. Education at all levels should be a Government priority second to none, for intrinsic human reasons and strategic ones. The Minister wants more accountability from universities, but should be careful not to trammel them with bureaucracy.
Even if research output is measurable and more prestigious, good teaching is no less important. Light and flexible regulation, concentrating on basics, works effectively in the financial services sector, and should also apply to third level. Another source of funds is proactively to seek full fee-paying foreign students, to make Irish education an export, not just a product for the home market.