Queen's University publishes a glossy magazine called the Vice-Chancellor's Letter to Graduates. The autumn 1998 issue describes itself as being "full of good news stories about your alma mater". The current bad-news story about Queen's - the row over the culling of 107 academic staff and closure of some departments - is not mentioned. However, the cover photo (trailing an article on climatic change) features spectacular forked lightning with the caption "Stormy Weather Ahead".

I am surprised that the Queen's "restructuring" plan has not prompted more debate in the Republic, not even after an Irish Times journalist concluded an interview with our Vice-Chancellor (Education and Living, September 15th) by saying: "It's all tough and challenging stuff, and prompts the question will universities in the Republic have the courage to display such openness and clear thinking?"

I will return to what I see, rather, as lack of openness, a lack of clear thinking. But first, let us think openly about higher education and money.

In the Republic, too, the culture of universities has been altered by competition both for State subsidy and for private endowment. In effect, the Vice-Chancellor's Letter is a begging letter. And the rationale offered for "restructuring" Queen's is financial, not educational. That is, the management seeks to replace so-called "research-inactive" staff, who may not do well in the next Research Assessment Exercise (RAE). A proportion of British government funding is allocated to universities according to RAE grades.

Nonetheless, the sum is not enormous. Queen's may be over-reliant on RAE money because the management has failed to raise funds in other ways or to invest them wisely. Elsewhere in the UK questions are being asked about the degree to which RAE is distorting the balance of academic life.

Teaching and administration were not taken into account when Queen's drew up its hit-list. A student who wrote to the Belfast Telegraph (where the row has been raging) spoke for many when she expressed her "incredulity" that a teacher who "represents for me all that one expects from a university" has been targeted.

It is inevitable, and often salutary, that universities should be money-conscious. It is also inevitable, in the 1990s, that students should care about careers, employers about their acquisition of "skills", which depends, above all, on dedicated teachers. Yet universities are about other things, too. Events at Queen's indicate how money can threaten the culture it should be sustaining.

And what if this goes beyond distortion into destruction? Margaret Thatcher said: "There's no such thing as society." Thanks to the retention of her education policies by New Labour, the UK may soon have no such thing as a university. By "university" I mean a community of staff and students, dedicated to higher learning and critical debate, and linked by values which are not wholly those of the market-place or personal ambition.

But universities have turned into business corporations. Vice-chancellors have turned into chairmen of the board. And businesses speak in business language: the Queen's "brand image", the Queen's experience.

A brochure for the "Queen's University VISA Affinity card" makes great play with the word "excellence". One paragraph boasts the university's "Excellence in research". The next paragraph is headed "An excellent credit card offer". Seemingly, excellence has slipped from an intellectual value into a commercial one. Sometimes students are called "consumers". Sometimes they are called "product". Can they be both?

What is happening at Queen's then, reflects wider forces. Yet Queen's management is also to blame. It has not been open, nor has it honoured the principle of critical debate. We appear to be getting the worst of the business and academic worlds.

The plan was produced as a fait accompli. Moreover, individual cases have shown up its inconsistencies. People were targeted on the basis of a projection by heads of department as to how staff might perform in the next RAE. The information thus collected - which was neither collected nor evaluated in the same way throughout the university - was never asked for in the context of jobs being at risk. Some academics had actually been encouraged to spend more time on teaching and/or administration to give colleagues more time for research.

As for "clear thinking", how hard did Queen's think about its local responsibilities, especially in the light of the Belfast Agreement? The management seems obsessed with promotion to the UK academic "superleague". For instance, little thought was given to the idea that geology or Italian, both of which are to go, might be a resource for Northern Ireland, a resource for Ireland.

What counted was "research culture", not culture in the wider sense. Teaching is the activity that principally locks the culture of the university into the culture of the community. And pressure to publish makes it less likely that staff will immerse themselves in voluntary activities, whether inside or outside the university.

The row has stirred local emotions. Of course, not everybody loved Queen's in its old guise, and some may prefer Queen's University Inc. But at least a deeper debate has grown from outrage at the shallowness of the "restructuring plan".

The uncertainties about the university's identity, and about how it should reconceive and position itself, go the heart of questions about the "new" Northern Ireland. The debate may even be a sign that we have begun work on that difficult project, civil society.

Edna Longley is Professor of English at Queen's University