Sir, - Though the tone is somewhat hyperbolic, I take it on trust that Prof Skilbeck, the author of the HEA/CHIU-commissioned report on the state of Irish universities, is indeed, as your Education Editor states, and as your Editorial repeats, "a leading world authority on education policy" (January 7th). It may be unfair to react to what is after all a synopsis of the findings in The Irish Times. But somehow the tone that I glean is profoundly antipathetic to what I understand a university to be.
The title of your Education Editor's article, "A wake-up call for the Irish university sector", is indeed well chosen, however. All of us in that sector need to wake up to the dangerous implications of reports that talk so knowingly, so blithely, so innocently about establishing "partnerships with industry", of "broadening our horizons" (whatever that is supposed to mean), of becoming "more entrepreneurial in selling our services", God help us all.
Prof Skilbeck is correct, however, in at least one assertion, namely that "the university is no longer a quiet place to teach and do scholarly work". Alas, that is all too true, though Prof Skilbeck appears to welcome the fact. I should have thought that the above definition of the university is a very fine one: a quiet place to teach and do scholarly work, precisely that. To renege on that definition, and for us as academics by our silence to refuse to combat the erosion of that definition, is indeed intellectual betrayal of the worst kind.
When the President of UCD writes (Opinion, January 8th) that "Government and industry must engage in the debate about the long term needs of the universities", and that universities "are prepared. . .to strengthen the links with industry", I feel there is something awry. I am reminded of a comment in a celebrated essay by the often derided Noam Chomsky called "The Function of the University in a Time of Crisis", when he writes:
"Consider the often-voiced demand that the universities' activities be 'relevant' to general social concerns. . .Translated into practice it usually means that the universities provide a service to existing social institutions, those institutions that are in a position to articulate their needs and to subsidise the effort to meet them. It is not difficult for members of the university community to delude themselves into believing that they are maintaining a 'neutral, value-free' position when they are simply responding to demands set elsewhere."
The educational praxis spawned in Mrs Thatcher's Britain and the cause of untold educational misery in the third-level sector in the UK is now set, with the blessing, perhaps, of the HEA, to infiltrate its grubby agenda in Euro-Ireland. (Though it has to be said that Prof Skilbeck's advocacy of a so-called national "quality assurance system" has already been accepted into the Irish university system with often nefarious results. But that is another story.)
As for the nasty little reference in the forword to academics no longer being able to "contemplate the universe at a leisurely pace", spare us that sor t of crass and philistine comment. Is it too much to hope that the Conference of Heads of Irish Universities (CHIU), who jointly comissioned the report, can see the colour of jaundice when it stares them in the eyes? - Yours, etc.,
Dr CIARAN COSGROVE,
Department of Spanish
and Portuguese,
Trinity College,
Dublin 2.