A shortage of affordable housing is freezing people out of higher education and eroding university life, Trinity College Dublin provost Linda Doyle has said.
Speaking at the MacGill Summer School in Glenties, Co Donegal, where she was delivering the annual John Hume Lecture, Dr Doyle said students are being forced to live in their family homes and endure lengthy commutes, which is diminishing their experience of campus life.
“The housing crisis in Ireland has implications for all citizens on a daily basis,” she said. “But it really restricts our ability for people to avail of education, if they cant find places to live. These things are important.
“Students have to commute from home. When you think about university life, it is about more than what they learn in the classroom. It is about all the other things they do too.
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“In some campuses people have to leave at 5pm, 6pm, to get back (home) and are not able to fully engage. We also have people from abroad who are not able to take up positions because of what (housing) is available. Not only is housing not available, but what is available is very expensive.”
Asked if the crisis was eroding university life in Ireland, she said: “Yes, I believe it is.”
Drawing from remarks by Nobel peace laureate and former SDLP leader Mr Hume, Dr Doyle said universities should be “places of great diversity that celebrate difference, places that live for ideals and places that educate for a future that will be as great as our dreams allow”.
While Irish universities had made some “strides” towards these ideals, she admitted that “of course we can go much further”.
The theme of the 43rd annual MacGill Summer School is the “destruction of Ukraine and its people — the fallout for mankind”.
Dr Doyle described Vladimir Putin’s invasion as “a huge affront to democracy”.
She said it was having “a major impact on the economy for most people, although some people continue to do well, and an enormous effect on the planet, whether talking about the carbon footprint of war, the fact that people going back to using fossil fuels or the fact that the planet is being pushed down the agenda because of it”.
“The world is broken — very, very broken,” she said.
In a historical context, while much of this had already been under way “now they are on our doorstep ... taking over a country in the middle of Europe, London is burning next door to us, everyone is feeling the real effect of the economy.”
“It is not like these things haven’t happened before but they have all come together in a very crucial way. They are present, they are very close to us now. We just can’t ignore them.”
Dr Doyle said universities must act like exemplars of how to respond to the manifold crises facing the world.
“I think we need to walk the talk,” she said, adding that she favoured the “doughnut economy” approach of pushing boundaries within the confines of a social foundation and ecological ceiling.
This includes “owning up to our part in global emissions” as well as “research influencing globally nature based solutions and green jobs of the future”.
“There is a Iot of work to do, in students getting a decent stipend for research, affordable housing for students and staff, so people can come to universities from all around Ireland, from all around the globe,” she added.