Newman saw university as a community of scholars, but for an elite. Higher education now should be about making much broader range of knowledge and skills open to everyone, writes Prof Patrick Cunningham
Newman's much quoted idea of a university is out of date. He dreamed of a close community of scholars, pursuing knowledge for its own sake. That made some sense in the mid-Victorian world where the privilege of higher education was exclusive to men only, and among men to those few who belonged to the ruling elite.
Today, university-level education is open to everyone, and is taken up by more than half of all school-leavers.
Scholarship is no longer confined to the reworking of the classics and the gentlemanly pursuit of natural science. It stretches from the limits of the universe to the innermost processes of the human mind. In short, Newman's idea of a university has been overtaken by the reality of a society based on universal access to an ever expanding corpus of knowledge.
Every think-tank and study group over the past decade has concluded that Ireland's future lies in the knowledge society. What this means in practice varies with the interest group involved, but one basic fact is clear: it will depend heavily on the performance of the higher education sector. That is why the Government invited the OECD to review the sector last year, and why the Royal Irish Academy has undertaken an independent assessment in recent months.
The academy report, Cumhacht Feasa - The Power of Knowledge, concludes not just that the sector "can do better", but that it must do better if Ireland is to gain and hold a position in the top rank of the OECD.
The RIA report has benchmarked the country's seven universities and 15 institutes of technology against the leading competition. Despite great progress in recent years, we are still below the OECD average on all the main indicators of input and output to the knowledge economy.
We are in the bottom half on staff/student ratio, on expenditure per student, and on total expenditure on tertiary education as percent of GNP.
One example: Trinity College Dublin spends 2.5 times less per student than ETH Zurich, a university of comparable size.
Measures of output to the knowledge economy, such as patent applications and scientific publications, show that we are also well below average. We will not be internationally competitive in R&D based on these figures.
Where Ireland measures up well is in participation rates. Starting with the establishment of the institutes of technology in the 1970s and the creation of two new universities, participation rates in higher education have increased steadily for the last 20 years.
In 2001, for the first time in our history, more than half of school-leavers went on to further education. Last year the figure was 55 per cent, and that proportion is expected to climb steadily in the years to come.
We have also seen a massive increase in commitment to what is now being called the fourth level, that is postgraduate education and research.
With the establishment of Science Foundation Ireland in 1998 and other channels of support subsequently, the Government has recognised that Ireland cannot be a serious player in the global knowledge economy unless its higher education and research is of the highest order. This message has been clearly driven home by the major multinationals that have invested so heavily here.
So how much will it cost to create a knowledge society in Ireland?
The RIA report quantifies what it will take. We start from a position below average. Reaching the average is not good enough. The target most quoted is to get into the top quartile of OECD countries.
On several measures,including staff/student ratios and expenditure per student, it will take an increase of at least 30 per cent just to get over the threshold of that group. To match the group average would require an increase of over 50 per cent. The report recommends that the 30 per cent "threshold" target should be accepted as a first step.
This translates into a requirement for an additional €450 million per year. However, up to half of this is already provided for in the NDP research plans. The balance of approximately €250 million should be envisaged as a phased programme of investment over several years, with the aim of achieving "top quartile" levels by 2010.
The key issue is then how such additional funding should be provided. The OECD review firmly recommended reintroduction of fees. The RIA report broadly concurred. Other possible sources include high fees from non-EU students, private philanthropy and funds released by internal restructuring. Collectively, these could provide only a small proportion of what is required. This puts the focus clearly on Exchequer funding and/or return of fees. That debate will continue.
Higher education is of course not just about jobs. Ireland's principal resource is the skills of its people, and it will certainly pay in direct economic terms to invest in bringing those skills to the highest international level. However, that investment also pays off very handsomely where the investment is in high levels of training in the arts, the humanities, in history, in law, in finance. Not alone do these fields contribute substantially to the full spectrum of economic activity, but they also enrich the quality of all our lives.
Whatever the balance of public and private expenditure, there is no category of investment that will pay higher returns.
Prof Patrick Cunningham, MRIA, chaired the RIA Working Group on Higher Education. See www.ria.ie to download Cumhacht Feasa - The Power of Knowledge