Madam, - Your Editorial of February 17th is at best naïve. How else to explain the description of the OECD as "objective and dispassionate" and the decision to invite it to review the third-level education sector as "a sensible one"?
Any review by the OECD will conclude, as it always does, by recommending lower taxes, less public provision, more private sector and more charges at point-of-use - standard neo-liberal orthodoxy in fact, just like its accomplices in the IMF.
Your idea that, for Irish policy-makers, the "fundamental question" is how to ensure that Irish third-level colleges can compete internationally with the likes of Yale and Harvard is not the case. The fact that the most successful and innovative economies as well as the fairest and healthiest societies in Europe - Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Belgium, Holland etc. - consistently take a different approach never causes these policy-makers, or their political or media fans, to change course. Just as the debunking by the likes of Joseph Stiglitz of the IMF's similarly rigid, ideological prescriptions for Third-World problems never provokes a rethink either.
Indeed your final paragraph would suggest that you already have a favoured solution to what you regard as the fundamental question: "the inevitable return of fees. . .private sector funding. . .universities to become private institutions". If this is the answer you want, the OECD is your man, without a doubt. If, however, you see the role and function of third-level education as crucial to both a successful economy and a fair society you would be wise to look elsewhere for guidance - and there are alternative models to choose from. - Yours, etc.,
PROINSIAS DE ROSSA MEP, European Parliament Offices, Molesworth Street, Dublin 2.