Teaching Matters: The imminent publication of the OECD Review of Higher Education in Ireland will offer us a rare opportunity to debate - and hopefully, to decide - on a future direction and structure for that vital part of our education system, writes Danny O'Hare.
Some key elements of the report - including its support for the return of fees - have already appeared in The Irish Times.
It is to be hoped that the debate will not focus on the minutiae of individual proposals, and still less on the vested interests of the many players involved, but instead will take as a starting point the kind of society we want to create in the new kind of world that is fast evolving. From there, we can examine individual proposals in the light of their likely efficiency in bringing about the outcome we desire.
In our planning, we should be aware of the risk of seeking to predict the future too precisely. Some of the most brilliant innovators in history - whether it was Einstein, Edison or Tom Watson of IBM - have tried to predict the future and got it wildly wrong.
This is not to say we should not prepare for the future - of course we must. But we should not expect to know precisely what we are preparing for. We should be relaxed about the high level of uncertainty that faces us, and focus instead on providing people with the best available tools, skills, knowledge and the most enabling environment. Giving people skills and knowledge is to provoke their innovative talents - in the arts, sciences and technology.
But tolerating uncertainty is inimical to the bureaucratic mind, and from that arises one of the major problems that faces Government in trying to manage the process.
We are correct, in my view, to hang our hat on the Knowledge Society as the area where Ireland should seek to excel. But it is vital to define that concept broadly enough: it is, for instance, a far more embracing vision than the Information Society.
The Knowledge Society will blend the arts and the sciences as never before. Our traditionally valued "arts" skills give us a strong - almost unrivalled - base on which to build. The challenge for higher education is not to throw out our humanities orientation and replace it with science and technology. Instead, what is needed is for the arts dimension to move over and give due space to science and technology. I am the first to argue that our need to increase the popularity of science-based subjects among young people is both acute and urgent, but in addressing this we should not neglect the great potential that the humanities will continue to have for our society.
To excel through innovation in a Knowledge Society we must fundamentally restructure our universities, so that the present balance in favour of undergraduate output is changed in favour of postgraduates. We simply cannot achieve the excellence to which we aspire unless we greatly increase our output of people with master's degrees and PhDs; our universities must become "4th level" institutions if they are to fulfil their role. However, achieving this is not a trivial matter, given that the structure of government funding to a university is now almost entirely determined by the number of primary graduates it produces. We must find a new funding model.
The restructuring we need in universities also points to a solution for the challenge posed by the institutes of technology, which currently seek to turn their backs on their traditional role in favour of becoming universities themselves. But it is to be hoped that the OECD can rise above the local perspectives that drive such wishes, and will instead set us back on track by proposing a role for the institutes that would see them working in partnership and parity of esteem with universities - for instance, by taking all undergraduates for the first two years of science, engineering and technology courses.
The survival of the Institutes of technology in an enhanced form is as vital to our future as the restructuring of our universities. Whatever way the future pans out, there will always be a demand for qualifications at certificate and diploma level, as well as for higher degrees.
The need to avoid over-specialisation applies also to research. The big research programmes (SFI and PRTLI) are most welcome, and for the first time aspire to move Ireland into the world class of innovation in the selected areas of information and computer technology and biotechnology. Our delight at these developments should not, however, blind us either to the risks of putting our eggs into too small a number of baskets - nor indeed, to the continuing need to foster research and development needs in small companies and to maintain a high level of technology transfer. A proper approach to research requires several facets.
But perhaps the most important advice the OECD Review can offer the Government is "hands off". The road to innovation in will be impossible to traverse unless the State relaxes its present level of detailed control over universities and institutes of technology. Our guide here should be the US experience, where 18 of the 20 top-rated universities are private institutions, and - tellingly - the remaining two are in states where legislation forbids undue interference with the day-to-day matters of public universities.
Danny O'Hare is a former president of DCU
