Teaching Matters: Over the past 40 years Ireland has developed a system of mass third-level education, writes Prof Tom Collins

Since the mid 1960s, for instance, the proportion of school leavers attending higher education has increased from about 11 to 55 per cent. The number of students in third-level education is up from about 20,000 to 140,000 over the same period.

It is widely recognised that State investment in all levels of education, but particularly in higher education in those years, was fundamental to the economic achievements recorded since the 1990s. But the expectations of higher education continue to expand.

The OECD's Review of Irish Higher Education (2004) drew attention to the multiple roles of higher education in supporting the knowledge economy and in enhancing the social and cultural life of society.

The Minister for Education, Mary Hanafin, in a recent speech, also drew attention to the more "fundamental responsibilities of institutions of higher learning in any civilised society," which she said, "relate to the development of individuals as independent and creative thinkers, the promotion of active citizenship and support for ethical values."

Considering the significance, therefore, of higher education to all aspects of the life of this society, the well-being of individual colleges is a matter of significant public importance.

Tensions within a number of Irish universities have recently attained some prominence. In characteristically robust contributions to this newspaper in recent weeks both Ed Walsh and Michael Mortell have clashed on the current UCC controversy - and the leadership of its president, Gerry Wrixon. These articles were symptomatic of a common tendency in much of the public commentary on higher education in Ireland - namely to subordinate a discussion on the role of the university to one of the leadership style of the president.

In some ways this is understandable. The university legislation of 1997 accorded very significant powers to the president, as opposed to the governing authority and, maybe more importantly, to that of the academic council. There is a structural predisposition towards centralised management structures within the universities - with the associated risk that the academic community feels more or less disengaged or ignored.

The risk of this happenening becomes all the greater where the university leadership espouses a vision for development that is not shared by all or even by the majority of the academic community. While the university president must take a leading role in shaping and defining this vision, it is imperative that academic buy-in is also secured.

Within academic communities structural reforms that are not explicitly aligned with a generally shared vision are likely to prove particularly contentious. They will be even more so when the academic community suspects that such reforms signify a move from a collegial to a corporate culture, or where long held tenets of academic freedom appear to be violated.

Within some higher education institutions in Ireland, two broad areas of difference seem to be emerging between the university management and the academic community. These concern the vision for the future development for the university and also the most appropriate organisational structure for its realisation.

There is increasing pressure now on all higher-education institutions to win research funding within a competitive bidding process. Increasingly, Irish universities judge themselves by their ability to compete nationally and globally for such funding.

Those who would question this strategy point to two issues. Firstly, they draw attention to the task of maintaining a quality teaching programme for their large cohorts of undergraduate students, while simultaneously pursuing such ambitious research agendas. In the UK, for instance, there is now growing concern that in the most research-successful universities undergraduate teaching is being increasingly provided by teaching assistants or junior academic staff. In this sense, the teaching element of the university's role is being diminished or casualised.

There may, however, be a more serious difficulty confronting Irish universities seeking such international pre-eminence.

The Irish universities rely on the State for about 80 per cent of their recurrent income. As publicly-funded institutions they must be seen to respond to the national requirement for mass third-level education.

And while the new funding model now being introduced will favour postgraduate students at a ratio of at least three to one vis a vis undergraduates, the Irish universities will still find it difficult to compete on an international front at postgraduate level.

Many of the elite universities, particularly in America but also in the UK, command vast endowments with which to fund world-class researchers. The Harvard endowment fund is now valued at $26 billion (€20.38 billion). Funds of this nature allow the university to be strategic, take prudent risks and selectively recruit staff and students from all over the world who will give the best return on this investment.

Irish universities will find it difficult to retain their mass nature while simultaneously pursuing an elite agenda. Colleges can be both, but this will require imagination and an openness to innovation and collaboration within and between the institutions, nationally and internationally.

All of this is likely to require a leadership style which is more consensual. It should be built upon a rich engagement with academics and the wider community on the future direction of each institution.

• Prof Tom Collins is head of education at NUI Maynooth