SKILBECK: THE REACTION: Dr Seamus Smyth, president of NUI Maynooth, looks at some of the reaction to Skilbeck Report assesses its relevance to the education system.
When the Conference of Heads of Universities and the Higher Education Authority jointly commissioned Malcolm Skilbeck to research and publish a review of the international forces and challenges that are shaping the evolving Irish university system, they did so with the intent of creating a debate - both within the universities and in society at large.
By that measure this unique joint venture has been remarkably successful. In letter pages, opinion pieces and weekly columns, there has been considerable discussion of the merits of Skilbeck's views and even the appropriateness of having a retired Australian professor comment on the university system of Ireland. Passionate and defensive gestures, abhorrence of creeping Thatcherism, and spirited praise for the achievements of the under-resourced Irish university system have been generated by current and former members of academic staff and also by members of the public at large. Yet, as is frequently the case, there lurk several misconceptions about the content and role of the report.
That Malcolm Skilbeck should have been commissioned to write the report was scarcely surprising. A former university president and frequent adviser to the OECD and UNESCO, he has worked with the HEA on a number of strategic documents. Formerly the professor of education in the University of Ulster, he has been long acquainted with Ireland. In the late 1980s he was one of four international experts who produced the OECD review of Irish education and in 1993 he personally contributed to the National Education Convention. Indeed, it was in recognition of his contribution to Irish education that the senate of the National University of Ireland decided to confer an honorary doctorate on him in May 2000.
The world which Skilbeck describes is one in which the forces of globalisation have eroded the protection of geographical remoteness, and technological innovations have provided opportunities for transforming the learning environment locally, while simultaneously inviting the challenge of foreign competition. Irish universities can respond best if the teaching and learning environment provided by them is of high international standard. Likewise, universities and their advocates should be alert to their need to equip themselves for research activities that are high in cost, high in value-return and which are best carried on within the organic self-sustaining intellectual ferment of universities instead of stand-alone research centres.
Operating within an English-speaking environment, the universities of Ireland have considerable opportunity if they position themselves correctly. If they ignore rapidly evolving world trends, or fail to observe how best to compete within that global context, the current custodians of the sector (academic staff and senior management alike) will have failed this country and their collegiate inheritance. In sounding the alert to the existence of an increasingly competitive and transnational world of higher education Skilbeck is providing a stimulus for opening up a debate as to how Ireland can best respond.
His reporting is not new. His synthesis is, however, masterly, and it provides the means of extending the debate about the future of the sector into the faculties, academic councils and governing authorities of our universities, thereby emancipating the debate from the privileged discussions of senior management and government policymakers. Skilbeck's report has the potential to support that which is intrinsic to university life - intellectual debate. To read it as a prescription for the future would be an error: it is a vibrant, accurate and detailed map of the rapidly changing territory inhabited by higher education. It is not the custodian of the only routeway through that territory.
Many commentators have identified from the Skilbeck Report the threat of the marketplace as an improper influence on the autonomy of the university. However, it is worth bearing in mind that the marketplace was - and is - associated with not only the flow of money, but also the massing of people. In both respects the influence of the marketplace have impacted upon universities. In 1966, when many current university presidents were either recent graduates or youthful undergraduates, Ireland provided higher education places to 19,000 citizens - most of whom were drawn from the privileged classes. Today, more than 115,000 places are provided and in the process Irish society has been transformed. The sector which has produced a social and educational transformation of national proportions has been altered in the process.
Similarly, there are many in our universities who can recall that little more than a decade ago the State funding for research support across all universities was reduced from a paltry £1 million to zero in a single year. Within the period of the current National Development Plan more than £1 billion will be invested by the State in research in higher education institutions. The detachment and neglect which characterised State interest in research in the past can scarcely be expected to persist in the face of national need for greater accountability.
Irish universities are central to future national competitiveness and it is appropriate that they now form the substance of a national debate. As that debate unfolds it will become obvious that universities have responsibilities that extend far beyond economic imperatives to include an assessment of how traditional values of scholarship, analysis, critical enquiry and the advancement and diffusion of knowledge can be protected and developed. Universities have an obligation to support social cohesion by inclusiveness in student intake, and they must also perform a key role in underpinning the quality of life in Ireland. Skilbeck is muted, but not silent on these issues. The challenge surely is to determine how best to strategically locate an outward-looking, self-confident Irish university system in a global context, while still cherishing the principles (but not necessarily the established practice) of scholarly institutions.
