The landmark OECD report on the third-level sector may already be politically "dead" because a huge increase in funding seems unlikely, according to the president of Dublin City University.
The report recommended a quantum leap in funding in order to allow Irish universities to compete with the world's best.
But Prof Ferdinand von Prondzynski says there was little sign of this, as the Government has understandably made primary and special needs education the main focus of its spending.
The DCU president said the OECD report was now all but dead in any real sense.
"The key element that would make all the other recommendations work - access to vastly more resources - is not even on the agenda if there is to be no discussion on fees," he said.
The harsh reality, he said, was that there was no world-class university in the State.
"We do not have the capacity to be truly world class given the level of resources - only a fraction of those available to competitor states," he said.
In an interview with The Irish Times he said the seven universities in the State needed to develop a more rounded strategy instead of focusing on the cutbacks in the sector. DCU is currently in the chair of the Conference of Heads of Irish Universities, the group representing the State's universities.
This rotating role comes at a time when the universities are still recovering from a cumulative decrease of about 18 per cent in current funding.
However, Prof von Prondzynski believes the universities need to forge a closer link with Government instead of constantly railing against it.
"We have to have a strategy which goes beyond a demand for more money... We in the universities need to be more creative about coming up with solutions to some of our problems.
"We need to be find more creative means like tax breaks and incentives to ensure we get the revenues we need."
The colleges, he said, needed to be much more active in recruiting non-EU students ready to pay the full cost of courses in fees.
He could envisage a time when up to one-fifth of all DCU's students were from the Middle East, China and South-East Asia.
He said the universities also needed to ensure they were not penalised for their success.
"If we manage to boost links with industry we should not receive less State support."
