Madam, - John Downes's article "A very British coup as Oxford eyes up top Irish students" is a timely reminder of one of the most urgent challenges facing policymakers and educationists (Education Today, September 27th). What is in prospect, if the correct steps are not taken, is an unprecedented brain-drain, with clear consequences for this country.
I am not arguing for any form of protectionism, as I have always believed strongly in freedom of movement. My argument is about ensuring that young Irish women and men of school-leaving age are given a real option in the shape of a world-class Irish university sector.
Mr Downes's piece reminds us that Irish universities are in a global competition for students. But we are hampered by serious disadvantages. Outdated budgetary and planning models leave us competing for funds at a national level with our own primary and secondary education sectors. Ireland needs a continuum of excellence from primary through secondary and on to higher levels of education - and we need the budgetary and planning models to make this possible.
I continue to be struck by the contrast between the certainty which has always characterised funding decisions on industrial development and the deep uncertainty which surrounds decisions on funding higher education. I know from current and past experience how intimately the two are linked.
Even in the most straitened times of the 1980s, we never considered cutting funds to promote industrial development. Now, when we are much more prosperous, we continue to treat the foundation stone of higher education inconsistently at best.
Irish higher education, like any other comparable sector, needs constant reform. For example, university research, as the engine of development for the knowledge-based innovation economies of tomorrow, demands a thoroughgoing assessment of current activity. I know that, apart from UCD, many universities are embarked on programmes of radical reform and change. This is a process which needs clear signals of support from the Government.
The urgent challenge now facing us must be dealt with through a combination of those of us working in the Irish university sector doing a better job and an end to the current continual uncertainty over funding.
The two must go hand in hand because a brain-drain is very hard to reverse and will damage our capacity both to attract inward investment and to grow indigenous success stories. If we do nothing, it is the brightest and best of our second-level students who will be recruited abroad, who will for the most part never return and who will contribute to the economic and social development of other countries. This is a loss which I have no wish to contemplate. - Yours, etc,
KIERAN McGOWAN, Chair, UCD Governing Authority, Belfield, Dublin 4.