IRELAND FACES a brain drain of its best students unless the higher education system is properly funded and given the freedom it needs to compete globally, the new provost of Trinity College Dublin has warned.
In his inaugural address, Dr Paddy Prendergast said Trinity’s national strength as an educational hub “is in jeopardy”.
His address, the first such speech by a provost, was dominated by the funding crisis facing the sector.
Dr Prendergast, who supports the return of college fees for those who can afford them, said: “We have no right to mortgage future generations by dodging this issue. They will not thank us. And we have no right to prevent those who want a quality education from paying for it if they can afford to do so. The reality is that if the best students can’t get a top quality higher education here, they will go abroad for it and they would be right to do so.”
Dr Prendergast warned that Trinity could not compete for Ireland on the world stage with “our hands tied behind our backs. We need to release some of the constraints acting on higher education. To compete globally, I need to have flexibility and decision-making powers, the same flexibility that other presidents of leading universities can count on, particularly with regard to hiring and promotions.
“At the moment I need to get permission for what I do.”
He said that if the Government could regulate in terms of outputs and leave universities to deploy resources to best effect for the education of students, then universities could prosper as employers and attract students from abroad.
If this could happen, Irish universities delivering quality education to large numbers of students could be significant creators of jobs.
“But in this country, we have twisted ourselves into a position where we are forcing universities to shed jobs rather than create them. It doesn’t make sense.”
A comfortable winner in the election for provost, Dr Prendergast began his 10-year term this month. At 44, he is the youngest office-holder in 250 years.
A native of Oulart, Co Wexford, he recalled yesterday how university did not feature in his extended family until his own generation. Neither of his parents nor any of their siblings attended university, he said.
Describing Trinity as a “great Irish success story”, he added: “We can’t rely for long on past reputation in such a fast-changing world, where, for instance, Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, shot up the ranks to overtake us this year, although it was only founded 20 years ago. I am afraid that some high-tech employers have already begun to question the quality of our graduates.”
Like everyone else, the provost said he appreciated there was a financial crisis, “but I do feel that there may be a resistance to the idea of spending money on universities which goes deeper than the immediate crisis”.
He pointed out how the total spend on a student in an Irish university was still only at the OECD average and was well below the EU average.
“If we take on more students, we need to take on more staff and have more resources available to run the courses. Unfortunately, the opposite has happened. Funding per student has been reduced year on year for the last three years.
“And what has been the result? An unfortunate slipping down the global ranks for Ireland’s top universities. A few weeks ago Trinity got its new ranking: 65th in the world. We have fallen 22 places since our height. The metrics are unequivocal. We do not now employ enough academic staff, by international standards, for the number of students we have.”
