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Failing to fund higher education adequately is blunting Ireland’s competitive edge

Ireland’s capacity to win the next wave of business investment is under threat due to interventionist policies in other jurisdictions

UCD rose to position 126 in the latest QS World University Rankings, increasing its score in eight of the nine indicators. The exception was the faculty-student ratio indicator, where the university now ranks outside the top 700. Photograph: Alan Betson
Orla Feely
Danny McCoy
Tue Jul 30 2024 - 06:00

Continuing underinvestment in Irish higher education is threatening the quality of Ireland’s education system and constraining the supply of skills and talent nationally. It is limiting the country’s ability to attract business investment and grow research and innovation capacity.

In May 2022, the Government’s Funding the Future report promised additional exchequer investment in higher education to close the funding gap of €307 million annually across the sector. The report also acknowledged the additional funding needed for national pay awards and future increases in student numbers.

The two budgets since then have provided €100 million annually towards closing this gap. However, the Irish Universities Association has shown that unfunded national pay awards consume €92 million of that figure. Additional cost inflation means that, despite Funding the Future, the core funding of Ireland’s higher education system is not even standing still.

One clear manifestation of this underfunding is in the ratio of faculty to students across our universities. UCD rose to position 126 in the latest QS World University Rankings, increasing its score in eight of the nine indicators. The exception was the faculty-student ratio indicator, where the university now ranks outside the top 700. This is mirrored across the sector nationally – of the eight Irish universities in the QS rankings, six are outside the top 600 for faculty-student ratio.

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This has an impact not only on rankings but, crucially, on the experience of students and faculty within Irish universities. It erodes faculty time for research, for supporting individual students and for engaging outside the university. It limits the ability of Irish universities to deliver small-group teaching, innovative lifelong learning and advanced modules in leading-edge areas.

Another area where funding deficits are becoming evident is in the equipment needed for teaching and research. In research, successive rounds of the Programme for Research in Third-Level Institutions, sparked by the late Chuck Feeney’s extraordinary philanthropy, transformed the national infrastructure. The last such round, however, was launched in 2010. The equipment funded by the programme is now badly out of date, with no comparable scheme to support its renewal.

Prof Hugh Brady, former president of UCD and now president of Imperial College London, ranked second in the world by QS, knows both Irish and international university landscapes very well. In a recent Irish Times interview he described how Irish universities “do a great job with limited resources but, comparatively speaking, the quality of experience is slipping and is only going to get worse over time”.

This is a significant problem for the next phase of the Irish economy, at a time when industries are transforming, enterprise demand for skills is advancing rapidly, and countries around the world are taking ambitious steps to secure their national competitiveness.

[ Trinity is highest-ranked Irish university despite slipping in world standings ]

The availability of talent, skills and people was central to Ireland’s economic transformation, and will always be central to the country’s proposition. A high-quality, engaged and dynamic higher education system is a cornerstone of long-term social and economic development and is critical for addressing the immediate challenges posed by the climate crisis, rapid digitalisation and infrastructure deficits. It is an essential element of the education system that Ireland needs to secure future success, including primary and secondary education, apprenticeships, further education and improved opportunities for lifelong learning.

From a business perspective, the role of Ireland’s higher education sector in supporting national competitiveness and as a factor in shaping international business investment decisions cannot be overstated. For myriad reasons, including increasingly interventionist industrial policies in other jurisdictions, Ireland’s capacity to win the next wave of business investment is under threat. Ireland will never be able to match the chequebook-style subventions of larger economies but can outperform in the excellence and agility of our talent. This will only be possible, however, with adequate and sustainable funding of higher education.

In lifelong learning Ireland is an average performer at best and well behind Europe’s top economies. Properly funded, the higher education sector, in collaboration with enterprise, can address this challenge and help prepare the Irish workforce for the great disruptive forces that are rapidly shaping it. The National Training Fund, now in excess of €1.5 billion but as yet unlocked, is an ideal mechanism to enable the higher education to play a significant role in addressing Ireland’s lifelong learning challenge.

Our higher education system has always delivered for Ireland, and has the ambition, ability and desire to continue to do so through changing and challenging times. But ongoing and acknowledged underfunding of the sector is limiting its ability to respond to those challenges and blunting our national edge. The full roll-out of Funding the Future, including covering those additional costs it identifies, will go a long way to addressing this.

Orla Feely is president of University College Dublin and Danny McCoy is CEO of Ibec