Maybe our brilliant graduates aren't all that brilliant? Are clouds looming on the Celtic horizon? Are we ready for the brave new world of the 21st century? What if our current education system is not meeting the demands of ever-accelerating technological developments?
A conference in Dublin today aims to discover if Ireland is equipped to sustain further industrial and economic growth. Some of the top thinkers from academia and industry in the US, Britain and Ireland are gathering at Dublin City University to examine if we are ready, at the dawn of the third millennium, to exploit opportunities that a changing world offers.
Today's think-tank, Building an Intelligent Island: the challenge of transformation in the knowledge industry, brings a panel of seven speakers together. They will explore the key challenges facing Ireland in the fields of education, information technology, human resources policy and communications. It's likely to be mind-boggling stuff. Will industries here start establishing their own universities to address their own specific needs? Are Irish graduates, prized for their technical knowledge and brilliance, falling behind when it comes to lateral thinking, leadership and the ability to analyse new trends? One speaker, Professor Ted Marchese, vice president of the American Association for Higher Education, points to new developments in the US and asks if there is any reason why the same trends will not be repeated in Ireland. "New non-traditional players are entering the market for higher education in ever-increasing numbers," he says. "New providers of distance education are growing in number, as is the new phenomenon of the `multiple' university with large numbers of branch campuses around the US. "The field is regarded as a potentially lucrative one for commercial initiatives, with new ventures being launched on Wall Street to address the area."
There's plenty of "growth opportunity" here, he says, but "unless you are already in it, it may be too late. You might want to find ways to defend your turf or to establish partnerships so that you can at least take part in some of the growth in the market that is occurring.
"Some industry associations have been establishing their own universities to address their specific needs," he explains. Could this happen in Ireland? How well placed are traditional universities to respond to the challenge? Are these developments likely to shape the higher education system in Ireland?
Tom O'Higgins, senior partner with PricewaterhouseCoopers and a former president of the Institute of Chartered Accountants, who has been involved in recruitment over a long period, will also address the conference. He believes that the Irish education system is a major asset in our national development but wonders "how strong our graduates are on skills such as lateral thinking, teamwork, communication, leadership and the ability to acquire and interpret new knowledge?
"The capacity to write and think clearly - oral and writing skills - are becoming more and more important," he says. Trends in the workplace are putting a greater premium on certain types of ability, O'Higgins says. He wonders if our current education system will be able to meet this need as it develops into the future, and he stresses the importance of an appreciation of business ethics. This is vital, he says, for those who are being recruited into the business world. "They must have a clear understanding of ethics. It's essential."
He says the universities could do more in this area; the universities and the Institute of Charteered Accountants should be, he says, "in dialogue . . . and yet there's not any forum for liaison between the universities and the professional bodies. The needs of the business world are changing and the curricula have to reflect this a bit more. There's a need for an overhaul of curricula."
The ICT (information and communications technology) sector has been "the single most powerful driver of growth in the Irish economy in recent decades", according to David Brown, of the London-based Schema Consultants, who will also address the conference today. However, he warns, in spite of this the education system has been "sluggish" in responding to "relatively predictable trends in the demand for skills in the workplace to facilitate this growth". Also, the needs of the ICT sector have not stabilised, he cautions. "They are likely to go on changing." However, "while we have taken on board the need for more places, are we taking account of how those needs will change in nature as well as in scale?" The conference is organised jointly by RTE and DCU. It aims to place the Irish experience in an international context and establish what is needed and how educationalists and trainers can nurture and disseminate the necessary knowledge, learning and skills.
According to Marchese, "it's amazing, positively amazing to me how many things are possible when you see demonstrations today via the web, which nobody even thought about four years ago." As the capacity of the Internet grows, he says, "the things that we can do educationally and on behalf of teaching and learning through the computer explode. "Explode is a fair word. And we're not talking about the year 2010. We're talking about two to three years."
He is optimistic about what can be accomplished. "There is a wonderful outburst of innovation behind a lot of this. There are innovations in teaching and learning, in curricula, in delivery, in service, in certification, in finance, both from the student standpoint and the institutional standpoint. There's a wonderful creativity behind a lot of this."
Prof Brian Smith, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) MediaLab, who will give the opening address today, says a student can change from being "a passive recipient of information to an active and creative explorer of knowledge. Digital technology has the ability to enrich and profoundly change the way we can learn," he says.
"Not only can technology open access to learning over time and space, but it can also be used to model and present complex ideas and situations in interactive ways." He says that the technologies being developed at the MIT MediaLab "tend to question the existing practices of schooling, moving towards a paradigm of learning outside institutional walls, outside fixed hours of the day".
The Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, announced in December that MediaLab Europe, a new independent, world-class research and enterprise institute, is to be based in Dublin. This conference will set the scene for a more focused look at the development of this centre.
The Government is joining forces with the MIT MediaLab to establish this new centre, and Smith's contribution today is expected to be of particular interest. He will give examples of how the media lab is developing technologies that may impact learning in the next five to 10 years. Within organisations, "the development and mobilisation of the intellect has become ever more central to the success of business and other organisations in the Information Age," says Prof Harry Scarborough of the University of Leicester Management Centre, who has carried out a study on "knowledge management".
It even overshadows many of the more traditional management concerns such as operations costs, physical assets and capital, he says. The development of knowledge management offers new opportunities "to leverage the often tacit knowledge of employees", but, he cautions, this "needs to be carefully aligned with the culture and human resources management policies of the organisation if it is to be successful".
Prof Dermot Diamond, director of DCU's Senior Technology Research Centre, who has had extensive experience of competing successfully for both overseas commercial research contracts and EU and HEA research grants, says that Ireland, to reach the top tier of worldclass economies, has to become "a serious player in the field of research".
Diamond notes the recent change in the level of official commitment to supporting and funding research in Ireland. "However, if we are to successfully promote international leadership in research in Ireland, we need to take a much more serious approach to how it is to be organised than has traditionally been the case." It is the mass media which provides "possibly the most influential channels for new thinking, information and ideas in today's society", according to Prof Farrell Corcoran, chairman of the RTE Authority. For example, he warns that the increase of private television stations right across Europe has "sucked more and more funding out of production. This is something we have to look at, to make sure we have revenue to invest in Irish production."
The activities of the MIT MediaLab are described as "inventing the future". (See panel.) Announcing details of MediaLab Europe plus a new multimedia village, the Taoiseach promised that the new institute would bring the future to Ireland. The organisation of today's conference is timely in light of the Taoiseach's cautionary note that "in the world of the Internet and electronic commerce, the future comes 'round faster than you might think."
