Madam, - There have been many news items and comments in The Irish Times concerning the review body set up by the OECD at the invitation of the Minister for Education to examine higher education in this State. The terms of reference given to the review body carry a preamble which speaks of "Ireland's strategic objective of placing its higher education system in the top rank of the OECD in terms of both quality and levels of participation". Many observers, including Garret FitzGerald (Opinion, February 16th), would argue that as regards quality this is already achieved.
The preamble continues: "and [in the context of\] the priority to \ create a world-class research, development and innovation capacity and infrastructure, etc., etc." Surely this is world-class bombast. We don't really need the OECD to tell us how to educate world-class workers in important disciplines. We do that already. What we do not have, and never could afford, are large teams of research workers using hideously expensive equipment in ideal laboratory conditions or luxuriating in fully stocked research libraries. On the other hand, the annual reports of the heads of universities show we are collaborating at world-class levels with such teams abroad, in pure and applied research and in relevant education.
So why does the Minister seek this review? The answer, I believe, was given by Proinsias de Rossa in his admirable letter of February 20th: the review is intended to bolster the ongoing attempt by the powers that be to wriggle out of properly funding the third-level sector, and in particular the university sector.
It is vital that the university system be cherished and encouraged. The proper purpose of a university education is not just to improve the earning capacity of students who experience it, nor to provide personnel for IDA projects, nor even to staff the professions, although these are all valuable by-products. The primary purpose of universities is to conserve, pursue and transmit knowledge, and so to produce men and women with an abiding interest in learning and in the proper application of knowledge for the benefit of the greater community.
Are Irish universities now about to experience a sustained campaign of innuendo and exaggerated complaint? There are already dark hints being dropped into the receptive ears of education correspondents about lecturers with too much freedom, lecturers not giving lectures, lax accounting methods and students who are not getting all the class-time that Mr Dempsey pays for so unwillingly. I do not say that the universities are perfect in every way all the time, but this kind of thing is just dirty tricks.
The idea, presumably, is that negative (and even misleading) suggestions about the university system will enable the authorities to hack at it without raising a public outcry.
As regards the mirage of privatisation, introduced by Dr Thornhill of the Higher Education Authority and ably exposed by Paddy O'Flynn (Letters, February 6th) as the "Harvard fallacy", it would be laughable were it not so sinister. Not satisfied with that effusion, the HEA has announced an inquiry into "fat" in a university system which it has already squeezed dry.
If the HEA continues in this mode, egged on by the Minister for Education and Science, it will need to conduct not an inquiry but rather an inquest. - Yours, etc.,
SEAN TOBIN,
Professor Emeritus
of Mathematics,
NUI,
Galway.