The Government's decision to ask the Paris-based OECD to review the third-level education sector is a sensible one. Its report should provide an objective, dispassionate assessment of the challenges facing the seven universities and the 14 institutes of technology (ITs).
Work on the review has been going on since September. But the fieldwork began in earnest yesterday when the review team met the Minister for Education and Science, Mr Dempsey, and the Higher Education Authority (HEA).
The increased investment in the third-level sector is widely seen as a key component of the Republic's economic success. Since 1997, investment has increased by 74 per cent; it now stands at close to €1.5 billion per year. The sector has been successful on many levels. Few objective analysts doubt the quality of teaching and learning in our major colleges. The sector has also provided thousands of graduates for the multi-nationals located here. In recent years, the success of the Programme for Research in Third-Level Institutions (PRTLI) has transformed the colleges, bringing a new sense of competition and a determination to compete in a global framework.
For all that, there is much to be done. When it comes to access for lower socio-economic groups, the Republic remains out of kilter with other OECD states. The third-level sector remains largely the preserve of the middle and upper classes in this State to an extent unrecognisable in other modern states. Some colleges have developed progressive access programmes but there is still the sense that these are token measures. Something much more radical is required.
Mr Dempsey had hoped that the return of college fees would transform the situation. His plan was to divert fee income of up to €6,000 per year to access programmes, but he failed to secure support from his Cabinet colleagues. It is widely expected that the OECD review team will revisit the fees issue, not just in relation to improving access but also in the context of the budgetary problems facing the third-level sector.
There is, as the heads of the universities have pointed out, a "disconnect" between the rhetoric about the drive towards a "knowledge economy" and the reality of an underfunded, hard-pressed sector. The stop-go approach witnessed last year towards PRTLI funding underlined the lack of a coherent Government policy.
That decision has now been reversed but, as the Department of Education itself acknowledges in its submission to the review, the colleges are experiencing real budgetary pressures. The question for the OECD is how to ensure that the third-level colleges secure the quantum leap in funding required to allow them compete internationally with the likes of Yale and Harvard. Is the return of fees inevitable? Or should the colleges be looking increasingly to the private sector for funding? Is there a case for new legislation which would enable some universities to leave the State sector and become private institutions, as the HEA has suggested?