Sir, - In his three articles on issues concerning Irish universities (The Irish Times, April 17th-19th), John Kelly gave an interesting analysis of the contemporary state of affairs in academia, especially the "unashamed vocationalism" of Irish third-level education. He asked "whether colleges should be offering learning or pandering to market demands for skills".
In the body of the article, however, Prof Kelly appears to accept as a fait accompli that universities are now the "powerhouses of industrial development" and that the ideal of a liberal education is dead in the water. A more critical evaluation of the encroaching vocationalism in our universities would be welcome. This is the subject of much debate in American universities, where there appears to be a far greater concern to preserve the very particular character of a university education.
There are at least three reasons for thinking that there should be a more thorough analysis of what is happening. Firstly, as John Kelly says himself, the university has had a vital role in the formation of the cultural and spiritual values of our world. In the words of one famous critic of the vocationalist university, a true university has the task of "caring for and attending to the whole intellectual capital which composes a civilization" (Michael Oakeshott, in Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays). Just because a more vocational model of university might appear to make good economic sense in the short term, does this mean we must happily accept the cultural and spiritual impoverishment concomitant with the demise of truly literal education?
Secondly, there is the question of maintaining academic freedom. An excessive dependence by the university on the state and on the world of business surely risks compromising this freedom of thought, which is also a freedom to examine the shortcomings of contemporary culture and to seek to redress them. The hallmark of the university must be love of truth, and the tireless search for truth in all areas of human knowledge. In the words of Pope John Paul II: "The vocation of every university is service to the truth: to discover it and transmit it to others" (Address for the 6th Centenary of the Jagellonian University of Krakow).
Thirdly, we must ask if students are not being deprived of one of the greatest assets a culture has to offer: that of learning considered as an end in itself. In my own experience of university, it would not appear so much that students reject the ideal of a liberal education, but rather that that ideal is never presented to them as a real option. Rather, they are incessantly told, beginning in secondary school, that the knowledge they acquire can have value only if it serves for some ulterior (and generally economic) gain.
It would be interesting to examine whether there is any connection between this sadly utilitarian approach to education and the recently reported rise in the drop-out rate from some Irish universities. - Yours, etc.,
Father Gavan Jennings, Fosters Avenue, Mount Merrion, Co Dublin.