Is it time to transfer the responsibility for them to a separate department? asks Ferdinand von Prondzynski
For some who work in third-level education, 2002 will be remembered as the year which began with the publication of Malcolm Skilbeck's report on higher education (The University Challenged) and ended with dramatic cuts in funding for both teaching and research.
Others again may think of 2002 as the year in which high-value science research, with universities often in partnership with industry, began to take off.
Many will have experienced just another year of stresses and tensions as the sector struggled to make sense of itself and its relationship with government, industry and the wider society. As we look ahead to the end of 2003, maybe we should hope that it will be the year in which universities are given greater freedom of action, and where the responsibility for political oversight is moved out of the Department of Education.
Much has changed for universities over recent years. They have rightly come under pressure not to be educators of an elite. Also, the old boundaries between disciplines have begun to look questionable in the light of new knowledge and new discoveries, calling into question university organisation and structures.
Alongside these agents of change there have also been other pressures for the sector. Of particular importance has been the growing expectation that universities show greater transparency in explaining and justifying their use of public resources and their performance.
In addition, universities have had to grapple with uncertainty about the future of the wider third-level sector, including the institutes of technology, the colleges of education and some of the private colleges. More generally, strategic partnerships have become a major agenda item, and such partnerships now often involve organisations other than universities.
Finally, and maybe unexpectedly, universities are now facing a serious drop in their public funding. As virtually all universities have been struggling even in better times just to break even, this threatens to destabilise the system and to usher in a period of risky budget deficits.
The key ingredients in this cocktail are uncertainty and change. That excites some and frightens others; the latter is typically the larger group.
But there is a perfectly plausible alternative view. It could be argued that, for the first time, universities are being seen as significant partners in a national strategy for economic and social development.
Until recently most policy-makers would have considered universities solely as the providers of an educational service. As far as it went it was a successful arrangement; it provided Ireland with the people and the skills for the Celtic Tiger in the 1990s. But while the Celtic Tiger was a major success, it did not produce a major move up the knowledge chain, and as we know direct foreign investment during the last decade produced almost no locally-based research and development. Since the 1990s some of the conditions which made Ireland attractive to the last wave of investors have been eroded. Any new wave of economic growth will be possible only if there is an exponential growth in research in some of the new interdisciplinary areas.
While many organisations and corporations will be involved in developing these new knowledge growth areas, only universities will have the necessary skilled teams able to address the complete picture, both in terms of research and in terms of education.
Or will they? The risk we run at the moment is that the significance of the universities' role will not be adequately recognised by the State, by industry and by the universities themselves.
The State may not be willing to provide adequate funding or to see universities as full strategic partners; industry may not believe that universities, with their often antiquated practices, will be comfortable collaborators; and the universities may not grasp the significance of partnerships, both with each other and with the other stakeholders, and may be too reluctant to abandon the traditional borders between disciplines.
In fact, some of the signs are not bad. Prompted by research funding programmes, all sides have become better at developing partnership models, and this has allowed them to overcome some previous barriers of suspicion.
Bodies such as Science Foundation Ireland (with its visionary director-general, Bill Harris) have changed both the content and tone of the debate on a national research strategy. Companies contemplating new investments in Ireland have discussed their plans both with the State agencies and with universities or groups of colleges.
As we move ahead in the shared agenda of improving Ireland's economic and social position, new ways have to be found to energise and motivate our third-level institutions (including the institutes of technology).
It may be that this task cannot easily be achieved while universities are under the jurisdiction of the Department of Education and Science. This Department is, for politically obvious reasons, always likely to treat universities as educational service-providers which come a poor second or third after provision has been made for primary and secondary education.
It may now be time to transfer the responsibility for universities to a separate department. Such a move would allow the State to harness the full strength of the universities in achieving further and more effective and more equitable prosperity in Ireland.
Prof Ferdinand von Prondzynski is president of Dublin City University, a member of the National Competitiveness Council and a member of the Research and Development Taskforce established by the US, Irish and Northern Ireland governments