Emer O'Kelly: Minister, universities are for the intellectual elite
The HEA's proposed academic conditions read like a horror list of inadequacy, writes Emer O'Kelly
ANYBODY interested in the progress and advancement of third- level education and beyond is familiar with John Henry Newman's late 19th Century treatise The Idea of a University. That, of course, is a given.
I joke: like hell it's a given. Nowadays first-year humanities students in Irish universities have probably never heard of Newman. It's not so long since every student of baby theology, philosophy or English literature would have been familiar with his orotund language and semi-mysticism because the treatise was a basic text in English-speaking universities here and abroad for first-year students. It had something to do with the fact that a university was somewhere you continued your education, rather than cramming for a job qualification.
Twenty-five years ago, I remember a mother who doted on her son (well, she's Irish) saying when he qualified for entry to Waterford Institute of Technology (WIT) to study some aspect of computer science (finishing near the top of his year), "Well, he certainly wasn't university material."
Doting though she was, she recognised that university required a particular kind of brain, devoted to broad studies, not the narrowness of social engineering. And it certainly didn't occur to her to imagine that the undoubtedly valuable career skills he gained in WIT amounted to a university degree. They were different, rather than being inferior.
We have moved horribly far from this outlook since then, culminating last week with the Minister for Education ready to agree new rules as recommended by the Higher Education Authority (HEA), which will open the way for what is being dubbed a "technological university" of the south-east. That in turn is set to lead to more of the country's technological institutes applying for university status.
This is in spite of the findings of the report commissioned under Batt O'Keeffe's Ministry, published almost exactly a year ago. It was conducted by a team headed by Dr Colin Hunt, an economist and banker. It made recommendations for the education system up to the year 2030, and came down firmly, not to say vehemently, against the idea of establishing any more universities anywhere in Ireland during that period.
At the time, Mr Quinn was in Opposition and said that the delays in producing the report were sadly indicative of a lack of urgency within the Department of Education to confront some important issues. For certain, Mr Quinn has not allowed the grass to grow under his own feet since taking office. And so far I've agreed with almost everything he's said and put in motion.
But in this instance he's moving to fly in the face of the Hunt recommendations, and there seems to be little practical benefit in that other than subscribing to the well-discredited Haughey doctrine of spoof: say you've X number of university graduates in the country, and if necessary reduce the standards to admit young men and women who can barely read or write. Result: on paper you have "the best educated young people in Europe". It'll also, of course, garner a few votes in the south-east, followed by the other areas which want university status for their institutes.
But Ruairi Quinn is already on record as decrying the poor standard of our university-level education. He's the first Minister for Education to have had that kind of courage: he didn't try to bluster his way out of simple evidential accusations that Irish university graduates are already academically immature: taught by rote, and without the ability to analyse, criticise and think creatively and if necessarily, subversively. Translated: they're badly educated.
Yet now he apparently plans to reduce further the status of third-level education by accepting that the new "standards" and conditions drawn up by the HEA, if implemented by the Institutes of Technology, will allow them to apply for designation as technological universities (beginning with the university of the south-east, currently known as WIT.)
These conditions read like a horror list of inadequacy. Most significantly, "at least 45 per cent of full-time academic staff will hold a doctorate level or the equivalence in professional experience, combined with a terminal degree appropriate to their profession".
In English, that means that less than half of all "academic" staff will have to be qualified in the subjects they will be teaching beyond primary degree level. Time was, and not so long ago, when an academic rightly knew that a PhD was effectively his or her union ticket: you didn't get on the lecturing staff unless you had it. And now they plan to allow a place with less than half the "academic" staff properly qualified to be designated a university?
And let's consider the place of research in our 'technolog-ical universities'. Universities gain their status and reputation from the amount of pure research carried on under their aegis, and its contribution to the furtherance of learning and knowledge. But research in these little local cauldrons "will focus on applied problem-oriented research and social and technological developments, with direct social and economic impacts and public and private benefits where the university is located". In English, that means posing local questions and requiring the university academic staff to find solutions. Copernicus and Galileo, how are ye. Well, I suppose the atom's been split already, so to hell with any more grand visions.
And it was even claimed by at least one eminent educationist last week that the institutes will actually be "stretched" by having to meet these criteria. God help us.
And there's another potential little fire-cracker in there. Work practices in the institutes are to be reflective of a modern university, allowing the "flexible delivery of programmes for diverse learner groups". I have a horrible feeling that "diverse" is one of those colourless politically correct words which will translate into providing "modules" of degrees in higher maths for people who can't count beyond 20, in the interests of "access and inclusivity". Don't get me wrong: everyone, regardless of academic status or indeed income, has a right to be educated to the highest level they can achieve, and indeed trained in areas that will provide work opportunities. But universities are for the intellectual elite and we've got to stop apologising for protecting their standards.
Minister Quinn has promised the Dail that there will be no political interference in this process laid down by the HEA. Please Minister, in the name of the dead generations, in the name of Berkeley and Newman; even in the name of your own old professor in UCD, despite his having been a brother of Garret FitzGerald and probably diametrically opposed to you in social thinking, interfere.
Originally published in
