Higher education needs reform - HEA

THOSE WHO benefit from higher education should make a contribution towards its cost, Higher Education Authority chief executive Tom Boland has said.

Speaking at the Parnell Summer School at Avondale House, Co Wicklow, yesterday, he said: "We cannot dodge the issue of resources. It is quite clear that the exchequer cannot fully support the cost of higher education, even as currently funded and at present participation levels only."

Mr Boland said philanthropy had a greater role to play and the authority had made proposals as to how tax reform could help this.

"But it won't bridge the gap. The institutions themselves have capacity to generate income, but while this should be encouraged, it too is necessarily limited. It is difficult therefore to escape the conclusion that those who benefit from higher education should make a contribution towards its costs."

There were, he suggested, "many ways in which this can be achieved, with straightforward fees paid by or on behalf of the student being least innovative. A voucher system has much to recommend given our lifelong learning needs. And there are other models".

He took issue with the manner in which higher-level institutions were addressing funding.

"We need to find more constructive ways to make the case instead of merely singing the sad refrain of under-resourcing. I'm afraid it's a fact of life that people quickly tire of 'Johnny one notes', however right the cause, however intellectually rigorous the argument and however passionate the speaker.

"The fact is that higher education already commands considerable public resources and because it does, it cannot and will not be immune from decisions on resource prioritisation.

"Demands for more resources are likely to at least meet a more sympathetic ear if tied to proposals for better use of those resources; to proposals for eliminating wasteful practices (should our universities really be spending precious resources on advertising their virtues to would-be students?); to proposals on how non-public resources might be secured and on real and innovative structural change," he said.

He also found it "difficult to see how the current fragmented system of seven universities and 14 institutes will deliver for us the critical mass we need to achieve national objectives and compete internationally. Collaboration, though a relatively new concept in Irish higher education, has made significant progress. But we need more. We need to look at opportunities for closer alliances between universities, between institutes of technology and between institutes of technology and universities."

He asked whether "in this centenary year of the NUI, should we think about a modern take on that old confederation? Is a reconfederation of our higher education system a plausible option?"

He believed the future success of higher education in Ireland would be built on four pillars: (i) equity, whereby "no one is denied access to higher education due to financial difficulties"; a relentless focus on (ii) quality; (iii) autonomy; and (iv) accountability, within institutions as well as towards society and Government.

Ireland, he said, "needs to increase participation from approximately 60 per cent to over 70 per cent [of young people) to achieve our economic and social goals. A special challenge is that many of the recruits must come from lower socio-economic groups as the higher socio-economic groups are at near-full participation."

Ireland also needed "to make serious inroads into the education needs of those who left the formal education system early," he added.