Madam, - The statement that our "Education System is not a cause for celebration" (Jim O'Leary, Business Opinion, February 4th) is wrong.
Irish degrees are welcome throughout the world. Their standards are assessed annually by external examiners from abroad. Academic departments are externally assessed at regular intervals.
Irish graduate students perform with distinction in graduate schools worldwide. Those who like league tables will be pleased that TCD is ranked in the top 1 per cent in the world for research citations in some 16 subject areas.
The Irish interface between education and the labour market has been the best in the world. Unemployment has been reduced from 17 per cent to 4 per cent, the lowest in the EU. The doubling of the numbers at work to almost 2 million is unparalleled.
The threat to Irish education is not complacency, as feared by Jim O'Leary, but so-called reform proposals. These include the wholesale abolition of academic departments and faculties and the addition of extra layers of bureaucracy.
The proposals have not been costed but a request for €20 million for "restructuring" Irish universities was recently rejected by the Government. The main advocates of these "reforms" have long avoided, in whole or in part, lecturing to undergraduates. Using the draconian sections of the Universities Act, some heads are determined to bulldoze through their reform proposals regardless of the costs in either educational or money terms.
Government intervention through the Visitor system is urgently required so that Irish education remains a cause for celebration. - Yours, etc.,
SEAN D.BARRETT,
Department of Economics,
Trinity College,
Dublin 2.