Sir, - It is good to see the year start with an attempt to arouse public interest in the future of the universities. All worthwhile organisations require scrutiny and even overhaul from time to time. But does the just-published Skilbeck report, "The University Challenged", propose a really new blueprint?
There is little new in it. It reads like a rehash of arguments used to introduce "managerialism" and government control in the British university system. Many of the issues and recommendations which the report emphasises have been either implemented or are in the process of implementation here - for example, improving student access, recruiting non-EU students paying full economic fees, interacting with industry and, very regrettably, a bureaucratic quality assurance scheme. The changes suggested are mere replicas of what has taken place in the British universities over the past 10 to 15 years.
An unfortunate emphasis on regarding higher education as a commodity requiring costly bureaucratic evaluation permeates the report. We have already gone too far on the road to "managerialism" and marginalisation of highly qualified academic staff in favour of meagrely qualified bureaucrats in the running of the universities both at administrative and academic levels. Just 25 per cent of the governing bodies of the NUI universities are academics, with 75 per cent being drawn from other walks of life and the general community. But Prof Skilbeck appears not to have noted this.
There are many inconsistencies in the report: the quality assurance schemes advocated and already introduced here require the "model" or "right" answer approach in university examinations, thus fostering rote learning at the expense of promoting critical analysis, some degree of original thinking and questioning and extensive reading by the students. Even Newman's liberal Idea is dismissed as only a classical ideal.
The universities have turned out numerous excellent scientists, engineers, doctors and experts in languages and humanities, but for how long? Unfortunately, many of these excellent graduates have to leave the country to achieve fulfilment elsewhere because Irish industry and State bodies do not require graduates of this calibre generally.
Partnership with Irish industry, referred to by Skilbeck, will be viable only when Forfas/IDA succeed in attracting the research divisions of international companies to locate in Ireland, a process in which they have been singularly unsuccessful. The author appears obsessed with projected decreases in student intake by the universities; should not this be seen as an opportunity to offer more personal, high-standard tuition to students, given the gross underfunding and appalling staff/student ratios in Irish universities - facts acknowledged even by Skilbeck?
The report has all the hallmarks of one commissioned by administrators to justify extending their bureaucratic tentacles into the university. Not satisfied with domination of the primary and secondary sectors, the Department of Education and Science started the process by introducing of the 1997 Universities Act. Through the agency of the HEA, the chairman of which is always the past Secretary of the Department, it now attempts to regulate the core teaching and research functions of the universities.
To judge by Dr Art Cosgrove's comments (The Irish Times, January 8th) the Conference of the Heads of Irish Universities is accepting the report meekly. The comments of the chairman of the HEA, that "the university is no longer a quiet place to teach and do scholarly work at a measured pace and contemplate the universe", is an unfortunate diatribe in the foreword to the Skilbeck report. We take exception to these outdated and archaic views being ascribed to the universities by individuals who appear to have little or no real knowledge of how the modern university should work.
Astonishingly, the report gives scant attention to the Bologna Declaration which will have enormous impact on the future direction of European higher education. For these reasons, and others too numerous to mention here, this report is destined for the shredder.
- Yours, etc.,
Prof JAMES HEFFRON,
Chairman, Convocation of the
National University of Ireland,
Department of Biochemistry,
University College,
Cork.
