THE HUNT report, outlining a 20-year strategy for the higher education sector, was finally published this week. To date, the response to the document has been decidedly lukewarm with critics carping that it lacks vision and represents a missed opportunity. The long delay in publishing the report – finalised six months ago – may be a factor here. Its key recommendation involving the return of student fees has already been implemented in the December budget; this raised the student contribution fee (formerly the registration charge) from €1,500 to €2,000.
The report is very polite and diplomatic in its choice of words, reflecting , perhaps, the influence of senior education “insiders’’ who formed the majority of the expert group. The robust and confident language of the 2004 OECD review of higher education is missing. There are also some contradictory proposals. Hunt says there are too many universities but then proceeds to back the establishment of new technological universities as a sop to the institutes of technology.
To be fair, there is much also that is good in the report. It is the first of its kind to address the difficulties first year undergraduates face in college after a Leaving Cert dominated by rote learning. It is also effective in making the case for more flexible and transparent working arrangements for academic staff.
Most of all, the report sets out the scale of the financial challenge facing the sector. The higher education system, it says, requires additional funding of up to €500 million a year to keep pace with record student demand and to meet Government targets for the economy. Current funding of the sector – largely dependent on the State – is “unsustainable”. Hunt hopes greater efficiencies and a sharper commercial focus will help the colleges bridge the gap. But, according to the report, there is no alternative to increased student fees and student loans.
This conclusion echoes the findings of the OECD report and a 2009 analysis, commissioned by former education minister Batt O’Keeffe. In the recent past, successive governments have ducked the challenge of finding a sustainable long-term funding base for higher education. Hunt makes clear this is no longer an option. The report will be criticised for its various shortcomings but it remains, as Ruairí Quinn of Labour put it, “the only game in town’’. It has set down a challenge which must be met in the interests of the higher education sector – and in the wider national interest.