All those concerned with third level need to hold our nerve and deliver on our rhetoric, writes Michael Kelly
AS THE Higher Education Authority (HEA) publishes our strategic plan for the next three years, we stand ready to engage fully with a broader comprehensive national strategic planning exercise for the entire higher education and research system which will provide a new strategic direction for the sector for a decade or more. The timing is right and the need is great.
As far as higher education is concerned, we are in a time which requires all concerned to hold our collective nerve and deliver on our rhetoric.
Following the most dramatic period of social and economic change in this country's history, we are now a wealthier, more confident people, at peace in our country and at home in the wider world.
We are also more educated, as demonstrated by another recent HEA publication: Higher Education: Key Facts and Figures. In a decade, participation in higher education has grown from 44 per cent to almost 60 per cent of the age cohort. In the space of just one year, 2006/07, the number of mature students entering higher education rose by 16 per cent, showing the healthy appetite among this age group for education and upskilling.
In the same period, enrolment in PhD programmes was up 8 per cent - ample demonstration that the Strategy for Science, Technology and Innovation has firmly taken hold in the system.
These trends have to continue. This is not just about the economy. It's also about the kind of society we want. We must build in those areas where we know we are creating and attracting employment, areas that require high level skills and flexible, inquisitive graduates. Recent job losses have underscored the point.
Now is a good time to take stock and decide as a sector and as a country where next for higher education and research. Our Strategic Plan therefore is something of an interim one. It strongly supports the Government's policy of creating and sustaining a knowledge society. Our vision is of a higher education and research sector that has a vibrant innovation culture, contributes to social inclusion, fosters an enterprise culture, provides flexibility and quality in programmes for students, and is underpinned by a spirit of inquiry and independent thought.
The Irish education system, and in particular higher education, is repeatedly credited as a key contributor to our past success and our future prospects. But if higher education institutions are to deliver on the demands placed on them they will have to step up to a new level of performance, manage increased levels of participation at undergraduate and post-graduate levels, maintain and then further enhance the quality of teaching and their other services, and be more innovative and flexible. Our plan calls on the institutions to be more strategic in all their activities and to find strategic partnerships, especially among Irish institutions, but also abroad, so as to achieve the highest possible levels of quality and performance. All the while, our institutions must also meet ever growing demands from Government, society, parents and students for accountability and efficiency.
The HEA must also deliver, for the sector and the taxpayer. Our plan sets out our strategic priorities up to 2010. We will work with the Minister and his department to have in place by 2010 a national strategy for higher education and research, encompassing a unified strategic framework for the institutes of technology and the universities. We will develop a system-wide, performance-based funding, which will support national goals.
We will publish and implement a new plan to support equity of access to higher education which will set new and challenging targets. We will manage programme provision to ensure diversity and value for money, while respecting academic freedom.
Our Programme for Research in Third Level Institutions (PRTLI) will make a key contribution to achieving targets set in the Government's strategy for science, technology and innovation. To demonstrate accountability in the sector, the HEA will this year publish the first of what will become annual sectoral accountability reports.
The HEA is only too well aware of the resource implications of the demands we are now placing on the higher education and research system, and on individual institutions, their management, staff and students.
Our plan stresses that the envisaged expansion of the system must not come at the expense of quality, and we acknowledge that we cannot expect our third-level institutions to continue to perform to the standards we demand unless they are adequately resourced.
The HEA will continue to provide objective, evidence-based advice to the Minister and the Government on the resource needs of the sector, to aid the system to deliver on national goals, and we will continue to make the case for more resources for the sector. We will also research and promote policy approaches which could lead to a diversified approach to funding, involving public and private sources.
As we enter a period (however temporary) of slower economic growth, now is not the time to be faint-hearted and timid in our expectations of our higher education and research system, or cowed by resource requirements. We should learn from the 1980s, a period of much more severe economic turmoil, but yet a period where we retained, substantially, our commitment to investment in education. The reward was the Celtic Tiger.
We should now, again, hold our nerve and have the courage to stand by our own rhetoric about the contribution of education to our past success. We should understand that what we do now, and in the immediate future, will be a key determinant of the agenda, economic and social, in the decades ahead.
Michael Kelly is chairman of the Higher Education Authority