The final lap

I confess that it is a strange experience to see your post advertised in the media – a little bit like reading your own obituary,  except that the obituary writer seems only marginally interested in you. Well, the job of President of Dublin City University has now been advertised, and the search is on. Don’t get either too worried, or too excited in joyful anticipation: I have another 53 or so weeks to go in the post, and then I will have completed my ten years (the limit for a university president’s term of office set by the Universities Act 1997). With any luck, my successor will have been identified a little while before then to allow for a smooth handover.

I am a committed supporter of the concept of limited tenure for Presidents, and I believe that after ten years it is better for the institution to get some new leadership, so I am not at all complaining. But on the other hand, I know I shall miss the role, for this is a dream job which I have enjoyed and am enjoying immensely. Universities are unlike most other kinds of organisation, and generally don’t respond well to an authoritarian leadership style; on the other hand, they need to be purpose driven and focused in facing their challenges. And so leadership is about understanding the institutional culture, prompting strategic action and recognising excellence and dedication. Sometimes it is about taking tough decisions and feeling the heat. And it is about interpreting the university to its own community and to its external stakeholders. I may be good or bad at any of these things, but I feel it is a joy and a privilege to hold this post, and I believe I have at least one of the attributes that are needed to be a president: I admire and respect the institution, and feel a great pride in its achievements. I genuinely believe that DCU is the most exciting university in Ireland, with some of the most talented staff.

But now, before I start writing my own (rather biased) obituary, there is business still to be done. Nine years ago I might have expected that my final year would be a year of gradually easing out of the affairs of the university. That looks unlikely. As luck would have it, my final year at DCU is also going to be the most challenging year – arguably ever – for the university sector in Ireland (and probably globally). Most of the assumptions we were taking for granted a year or two ago are now forgotten or under severe threat: the idea of continuing long term expansion, further major capital investment in higher education infrastructure, the rapid commercialisation of research, growing staff numbers, institutional autonomy. The only assumption that many people now dare to hold is that however pessimistic you are, you are probably under-estimating the problems.

In relation to almost any issue that matters to the future of the higher education system, the die will be cast over the coming 12 months, prompted by the next government Budget, by the outcome of the strategic review of higher education, by the decision on tuition fees promised for later this year, by the results of what may be the last (for a while) major research infrastructure investment by the state, by the decisions about to be made affecting university autonomy and quality assurance, by discussions on strategic links and partnerships. When this coming academic year is over, the future of the sector may have been determined, perhaps for a generation. What I would like to see is that DCU moves decisively, and also with a sense of confidence, through this period. So for this last year of my term of office, the challenges will be huge; but DCU has in its short history been able to thrive on challenge. I expect it to stay that way, and I intend to do my bit very actively during this final lap.

PS. If you are interested in my job, you can find the details here.

Finding some social space

For a couple of years in the late 1970s, I was part of a small group that travelled around the Irish Midlands every so often to take part in what was then a popular phenomenon: the whist drive. Whist, as I hope at least some readers will know, is a team card game., and a ‘whist drive’ is an event at which teams compete for a prize. To be honest, I don’t really know how widespread whist drives were at that time, but they were in fashion in Counties Westmeath and Offaly (which is as far as we got) back then; and if I say so myself, I was rather a good player.

But what I remember most from those days is not the game but the occasion. The players were an extraordinary social mix, from all sections of society, and in addition to the game there was a lot of conversation over refreshments. And in many respects I found that social side of the events even more interesting than the playing.

I had forgotten about this until a passer-by in the town where we currently are asked today whether there was a ‘bingo hall’ anywhere in the vicinity. I confess I have only ever played bingo once or twice, and I have no idea whether there is any such thing as an operational bingo hall here. Somehow I doubt it, because the era for such diversions seems to be over. And that made me remember the whist drives.

Of course there is entertainment of much greater sophistication available today, a good bit of it heavily technological. But not much of it takes place in spaces where people gather and socialise. And even when people manifestly want to gather – as can be seen with many young people – we don’t offer them the space in which to do it; and then we wonder why they annex a space that suits them and from which they create apprehension in others. Moving them on from that is not the answer – we need to give them the infrastructure for social interaction.

We cannot turn the clock back: it is unlikely that are going to return to whist drives and bingo. But we need to find the modern equivalent, and the locations for it. We already know and have the online virtual locations, but I believe we also need the physical ones. Now that our recently acquired wealth is coming under threat, it is time to re-discover a sense of community.

On this day

It would not be right to ignore that this is a special day for the United States, and so this post begins with warm greetings to our American friends. With all its (occasional) faults, the United States has been a home of democracy, tolerance, energy and innovation, and our fate is always closely bound up with theirs. Right now they have an administration which has generated optimism at home and a new spirit of partnership in the world. We are in difficult times, and this partnership matters more than ever. So I wish my American friends a very happy Independence Day.

There is however another anniversary on this date that I want to mention today. Exactly 135 years ago today the mathematician and clergyman Charles Dodgson took three young girls on a boating trip on the River Isis at Oxford, and in the course of the day told them the story which was to be published as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. I am always amazed at the number of people I meet who have a good knowledge of the story in general terms, know many of the characters that appear in it and even some of the verse, but who have never actually read the book. Some have seen film or animated versions, and while some of these are not at all bad they are no substitute for the original; indeed the rather well known animated  Disney version (though rather good in its own way) strays quite far from the book.

I have always felt that Alice is a must-read for academics, not least because behind the familiar story there is an interesting analysis of logic, examined through the prism of nonsense – logic and nonsense being, of course, closely related. The book also illustrates both the essential and the appallingly dangerous nature of open inquiry.

In fact, I am going to take the book out again today and re-read it.

Re-establishing trust

The first Soviet leader, Vladimir Lenin, is said to have remarked once, ‘Trust is good, control is better.’ Whether he really said this or not, it is a principle that underpinned the Soviet Union’s system of bureaucracy, and it is at least arguable that it contributed to the ultimate collapse of the USSR. It would be wrong, however, to imagine that other political systems have consistently approached public administration differently; there has always been a tendency to see tight government controls as a solution in almost any crisis. And we are currently careering through an unprecedented crisis in which the imposition of controls has become not just a government response but also a public demand: we want to persuade ourselves that a serious financial crisis, or an ethical crisis in top management, will never occur again if only we impose a regulatory straitjacket.

The higher education sector is currently on the receiving end of this approach, and indeed is experiencing this without having made any known contribution to the economic difficulties we are in. And yet the consensus in political circles appears to be that a light touch system of governance has failed and will need to be replaced by onerous controls and bureaucratic interventions. I don’t mean this comment to be confrontational, as I accept that universities have not always been good at demonstrating transparency, and though they have tended to respond well to national priorities as determined by government, this has not necessarily been communicated well to stakeholders. So we are now experiencing regular new mechanisms to restrict freedom of action by universities and subject even quite detailed operational decisions to direct bureaucratic restrictions.

In the end, my point is that the sector will both work more willingly and constructively to help secure national objectives, and will do so with a greater sense of innovation and reform, if the basis for the relationship between it and government were based on trust and confidence. We need to gain a better understanding of how this was compromised or lost, and how we can restore it. What is facing us right now is a whole-scale bureaucratisation of the system (which will probably turn out to be very costly in both money and effectiveness), and we need to seek dialogue to ensure that this is not what happens. Universities as administrative units of government will not secure global excellence, and are unlikely to be imaginative educators.

There is significant research to demonstrate that trust is an important ingredient of good governance. It is time to think again, for all of us.

What on earth is wrong with some economists?

Yesterday I was interviewed on Newstalk 106 – for overseas readers, an Irish talk radio station. My task was to give some advice to aspiring students making subject choices, but just before winding up the interview, the presenter asked me to comment on what had been said by a well-known economist (who works for another university) on the same radio station: that Irish universities waste resources, are over-funded, cannot manage student retention and unnecessarily promote subjects that don’t attract any real interest. Or something like that. I am not naming the economist in question, since I didn’t hear him myself and he may have been mis-quoted, or I may not have caught it correctly.

But let us say his words of wisdom were accurately relayed to me. It makes me want to pull my hair out. What possesses apparently intelligent academics who have made a good career out of being in the limelight on the back of their university positions to dump on their institutions in this way, particularly when they do so by talking such rubbish? The key ingredient in all this (and I have mentioned this type of thing before) seems to be the suggestion that higher education serves no functional purpose other than to engage the mind, and that therefore university programmes (either teaching or research) that relate to specific national needs are misplaced; other than the need, of course, to have more economists.

Of course the broadening of the mind is a key mission of universities, and all systems of higher education must have space for programmes of study that do not target specific careers, just as they must make room for pure research. But the overall structure of the university system that is needed for any successful country must go beyond providing for free markets in student choice.

Before I get hate mail, let me strike a balance and admit that I have many good friends who are economists, and I even agree with what some of them believe in. But there appears to be a strand of thinking within the profession that fails completely to understand the significance of universities in a modern society. Sigh.

Television drama

One of the major cultural influences of the 1970s – well, at least one of the major cultural influences on me – was the BBC’s series Play for Today. These were one-off TV dramas, written by people who were, or who became, household names in serious creative writing for the screen; they included cultural giants such as Dennis Potter, Mike Leigh and Alan Bennett. The series tackled political, social and moral issues, as well as providing hugely memorable stories. Beyond that, the series demonstrated the capacity of television to be a genuine cultural force, rather than just a medium of light entertainment. It is arguable that, in its early years in the 1980s, Channel 4 picked up the baton (only to drop it with a clang later).

I was reminded of the sheer power of Play for Today when, recently, I came across an audio tape recording I made of one of the episodes in 1976; and although this may sound daft, even without the video the sound recording still transmitted the sheer intelligence of the play.

Television of course can and should serve a number of different purposes, and this certainly includes entertainment, and even entertainment pretending to be culture (as in the case of costume dramas and so forth). But one of these purposes should be to push the boat out through the genre of drama, to ask awkward questions and, occasionally, to refuse to answer them so that viewers are forced to engage their own minds. I wonder, however, whether television still does that in any consistent way. There are drama series which, at one level at least, manage to be innovative and occasionally provocative, including the really wonderful West Wing series that aired for much of this decade. I even find that the medical drama series House – practically the only TV show that I am watching consistently at the moment – has the capacity to stir up at times. But unless I am not properly reading the TV guides and the reviewers, there really is no contemporary equivalent of Play for Today. And indeed what there is in serious television (though the same is true, I would have to say, for trivial TV) tends to come from the US rather than from the UK.

The BBC was the great cultural influence of my youth. It is really time that it returned more deliberately to its original mission.

The very, very, very slow progress of the fees proposal

Another bit of news today regarding the likelihood of a plan by the government to reintroduce fees. In a nutshell, today’s news is that nothing will happen just yet. The Minister for Education and Science will, it appears, put a draft proposal on fees to cabinet colleagues this month, but won’t put a formal proposal to the cabinet until September. Assuming that this proposal is for the reintroduction of fees, and assuming further that the government adopts it, we don’t know what the timeline will then be for the implementation of the decision; except that, obviously, nobody will be paying fees for another year at least.

The Minister also indicated to RTE that ‘people would be pleasantly surprised that the system he would be proposing – if adopted – will not be as financially difficult as perceived.’ It is hard to know what to make of that, exactly. And here is one of the problems. While members of the cabinet may be about to have details of what could be proposed, nobody else has any real information, and therefore nobody can subject the proposal to analysis or present any informed views or feedback.

It is, I think, time to involve the third level community in this whole project. It is important that any proposal is considered in terms of its practicality, and those best placed to offer views on that are those who work in the institutions. It is very hard to have an informed debate when nobody has really been informed, and it would help the atmospherics of the whole thing if this gap were to be filled. I hope that the Minister will take that opportunity.

Bursting the education bubble?

In an online comments section of the New York Times, a Columbia University (New York) professor today makes the following comment:

The next bubble to burst will be the education bubble. Make no mistake about it, education is big business and, like other big businesses, it is in big trouble. What people outside the education bubble don’t realize and people inside won’t admit is that many colleges and universities are in the same position that major banks and financial institutions are: their assets (endowments down 30-40 percent this year) are plummeting, their liabilities (debts) are growing, most of their costs are fixed and rising, and their income (return on investments, support from government and private donations, etc.) is falling.

Not everyone may like the reference to higher education as ‘big business’, but the central point is an important one. All over the world right now – and that very much includes Ireland – universities are being driven into a financial and operational disaster. Public funding is being cut dramatically, while at the same time regulation is tightening, non-public sources of income are falling away, students are facing hardship. But unlike the financial sector, or for that matter pretty much any other sector you might identify, universities are not only not seen as organisations that may need to be supported or even rescued, but rather are being targeted for still harsher treatment.

In Ireland universities are walking a financial and operational tightrope right now, and most are in deficit or at risk of falling into one; some have very substantial deficits. All over the sector investment that is needed to maintain buildings, update equipment and provide essential services is being withheld as institutions struggle to maintain front line services. And while public funding is being cut, the ability of the universities to raise money from other sources is being restricted, and highly bureaucratic controls are being increased.

As we consider higher education strategy nationally, we need to face some of these realities, and we may even have to ask ourselves whether the continuing growth in student numbers is affordable. If the education bubble does burst, the consequences will be frightening. We need to ensure this doesn’t happen. As a country we have built a reputation as a place where we educate skilled graduates in sufficient numbers and produce world class research that will support knowledge-intensive investment. We must not lose that reputation, for if we did, the losers would extend far beyond higher education.

‘Free’ higher education: the quality dilemma

Today’s Irish Times carries an opinion piece by a Gerard Horgan, described only as someone who ‘works in the education sector.’  The article, entitled ‘Free education can benefit all of society’, takes issue with the idea of the reintroduction of university tuition fees, principally on two grounds: that fees will hurt those from disadvantaged backgrounds, and that they will lead to increased indebtedness of students.

I am sure this is a well-intentioned piece of writing, and as I have mentioned before, I am myself not hugely comfortable with the principle of tuition fees. But the arguments he uses here are weak and the analysis is incomplete. In particular, his contention that people from ‘impoverished backgrounds’ will be affected is actually silly, as one thing that everyone is agreed upon is that the current supports for such persons are inadequate and that any system of fees will continue to exclude persons from such backgrounds from the obligation to pay them. Indeed, one of the key arguments for bringing back fees is that people from socio-economically disadvantaged groups can actually receive more targeted support, as money currently funding wealthier students can be redirected. The problem, as I have mentioned previously, is not with impoverished students, but rather those from middle income backgrounds, and it is here that some analysis will have to be carried out.

The argument about indebtedness is a more serious one, but here there is considerable experience in other countries with how to provide financing that is sensitive to student needs and does not financially cripple people at the start of their careers.

But the key point we cannot escape from is that the taxpayer, represented by the government, is clearly unwilling, and now probably unable, to fund higher education to the extent that it needs to be funded to maintain quality. For each student an Irish university enjoys a per capita level of funding which is only about half of what is available in the UK, and a fraction of what a US university on average can expect. That is unsustainable. There is a choice, of course, and the state could pick up this bill properly: but only if taxpayers, as voters, were willing to see income taxes rise to fund this, and if the funds so collected could be ringfenced. This would be a positive scenario, but realistically it will not happen.

There is still a debate to be conducted around this, and there are important issues to be debated, but the contributions to this debate need to be somewhat more sophisticated than this one.

Developing rhetoric

As a young boy I had, I believe, a very bad stammer. I don’t really remember this – I was very young at the time – but I believe I received some treatment for it; in any case the problem was overcome and my speech was fine. However, there is a legacy: there are a few words which, if I am at all self-conscious when I am saying them, make me stutter, for example ‘theological’ and ‘logistical’. If I know I am going to say them I become self-aware as the difficult word approaches, and then I have to work to get the word out. It’s not a big deal. I keep my verbal comments about logistics to a minimum. But the other legacy for some years was that I was nervous about public speaking and would avoid it. I had no problem speaking with friends or chatting in a group, but if someone called for silence and all eyes turned to me I would become scared that I would stutter, and so I avoided such occasions.

When I was a student in Trinity College Dublin in the 1970s, I was on one occasion persuaded to participate in a debate. I was really worried about whether I could do this, and so I assembled what I thought was a clever speech, wrote it out on a typewriter, and when my turn came I read it out from the paper. I must have been dire. I was one of a team of two. We came last. When the judges pointed out that my team mate delivered by far the best speech of the evening, I realised that my speech must have been catastrophic. In my determination not to repeat that, I found the secret of success for me: if I am going to speak, I won’t speak from a prepared script. Think about it in advance by all means, and structure the speech in my head; but no script. And that has worked for me. I am occasionally told that I speak well, if you’ll forgive the arrogance of that statement.

Anyway, the point of all this is that rhetoric – the art of persuasive speaking – is such an important skill in the academic environment. Few academics are trained in it, and if we’re honest not all of them do it well. Too often we believe that the intellectual cohesion of what we say should be enough, and that our skills in communicating it are of no great importance, or possibly even a sign that the academic pedigree of the content is deficient. I have never bought that: I believe that as lecturers we must be able to inspire, impress and entertain; these rhetorical devices help to engage the student and make the subject-matter memorable.

In other professions rhetorical ability is also important, and is often neglected. For example, we all know of a small handful of politicians who can make us sit up and listen, but most political speeches are a cure for insomnia. This is not helped by the fact that, in our system, parliamentary debates chiefly consist of either handing out wild insults and engaging in boorish behaviour, or when that is done, settling down to wholly tedious (if often worthy) speeches. But as Barack Obama has shown, the ability to communicate with skilful rhetoric is a powerful way of ensuring that citizens remain committed to the democratic political process.

In this particular phase of history, good communication is vitally important. When economic and social conditions become complex, the ability to communicate effectively is vital, not only for politicians, but for anyone who has a message to send out that can promote confidence and determination. Effective communication is not a dark art, it is what allows ideas to be disseminated and to grow. We should care more about this, and should ensure that speaking and rhetoric are skills that are valued by society. And we should train more academics to deploy these skills.