What do we do now?
I am a fan of the actors Robert de Niro and Robin Williams. So when they both appeared in the same movie in 1990 I made sure to see it as soon as it opened. The movie is Awakenings. In summary, the plot revolves around a doctor (Williams) who discovers that a particular medication can ‘awaken’ patients who have become catatonic after contracting encephalitis. He succeeds in resuscitating a whole ward full of them (the first one being de Niro), and to reintroduce them to a life they had pretty much lost. However, after a while we discover that the effects of the medication are temporary, and one by one the patients return to their catatonic state. It’s a good movie, if you allow for some slightly over-the-top ham acting by de Niro and a somewhat awkward romantic sub-plot.
Right now it seems to me as if the plot of Awakenings could be some sort of parable on the higher education sector in Ireland. When I started my professional academic life in 1980, universities in Ireland were on the whole pretty lethargic, not because anyone was deliberately or negligently under-performing, but because the resources were not there for us to be anything else. We had old, not-fit-for-purpose buildings, an unfavourable staff-student ratio, and virtually no research performance by international standards. I suppose it would be fair to say that, given those constraints, there were some academics and groups who did perform amazingly well, but Irish higher education as a whole was not visible internationally. Then came the Celtic Tiger, a sudden surge in student numbers, serious research funding (initially kick-started by Chuck Feeny’s Atlantic Philanthropies), research councils and foundations. We are not yet amongst the top universities globally, but we are on the way up. I suspect that this year’s global rankings will see some further improvements in the standing of Irish universities.
But if I am right about the rankings, then enjoy it, because this may be the peak, and now we’re going down. For next year and beyond, everything may be against us. Public sector embargos and similar measures will reduce staff numbers and worsen staff-student ratios (which are already bad by international standards); research funding is being cut (and we have yet to see by how much). And these two metrics are perhaps those that most significantly influence world rankings. As the effects of these measures come into account we must anticipate a visible deterioration in our sector, not made any better by the creeping imposition of bureaucratic controls likely to militate against innovation and initiative. The ‘awakenings’ may come to an end as the medication is withdrawn.
Or maybe we need to decide now that we will not just sit back and let all this happen. Despite the hostile environment of the 1980s, in parts of the higher education sector this was also a time of innovation and enterprise. My own university, DCU, grew strongly over that period and was able to innovate effectively. Others did also. We need to find ways now of becoming less dependent on an increasingly unreliable state, by finding new revenues that will allow us to support our key priorities and maintain standards while we do so. We need to develop strategic goals that we can pursue successfully, particularly in cooperation with each other. We must not sit back and wait to be victims of the evolving circumstances.
The key to our continuing growth and success will be financial ingenuity. Without resources we can do very little. This means that we must make the best case we can for public funding, but we must also become more active in trying to influence the debate around fees, and we must also look at ways of harnessing our facilities and our skills to secure other income. It is worth a fight to ensure that we retain the international recognition and the excellence that we have so far secured and to build on that.
And of course if we success, we can start planning the movie. I was thinking that Brad Pitt might be suited for my part. And I’m sure we can find a part for Angelina.
Explore posts in the same categories: higher education, universityTags: Awakenings, Robert de Niro, Robin Williams, university rankings
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August 24, 2009 at 2:24 am
I enjoyed your fun analogy and it seem churlish to point out that it doesn’t work at all: in Awakenings the medicine was not withdrawn, the problem was that the system needed to metabolize it had atrophied; in our case, remarkably, that wasn’t true, when the government started supporting the universities we proved more than capable of responding to that support. In our case the medicine is being withdrawn even though it proved beneficial.
BTW: Have you ever seen the Pinter play inspired by reading Awakenings: A kind of Alaska; it is very beautiful and unbearably sad.
August 25, 2009 at 11:15 pm
Aoie, you are obviously quite right in your critique of my analogy. I suppose I was more focusing on the awakenings, and then the gradual return to catatonic state…
August 24, 2009 at 5:10 am
At the moment there is 100m going into the private sector secondary schools -info via bord snip nua. Over 20b, how much over no one in the department of Health can say, being spent in this State on Health each and every year. God alone knows how much is being handed to farmers for their accounting practice would have made the Gordian Knot look like something designed for fast release of a sheet on a Currach. There is a miriad of other payments, tax foregone or payments to a sectors designed for a population 10 times larger, but it would give me a headache listing them. But to describe the last 20 or so years in higher Education as some sort of Awakening is to misrepresent that History in a grevious way.
The reality, that far less than numbers demanded over the years were World class. From TCD, been there a while, kicks up about one and a half every 100 or so. In the early years of the Queens University of Ireland there was a flowering, which may or may not have anything to do with a Papal comment, but since that one could hardly say its members were atoms on the leading edge of the axe.
No, all in all, work a day might be the best way to describe Irish higher education. But my God was this education pricy.
Et, in the buildings one can see each and every property bubble this island has underwent since 1592.
August 24, 2009 at 10:04 am
I am sure that the university league tables include metrics which simply react to more money being spent. The real test will be in about 5 years time: If the Irish Universities manage to maintain their rankings (via real achievement) even if the money dries up, then the money will have been well spent. Otherwise we will just have to wait a decade or so until we can buy our way back up the league tables again…
August 24, 2009 at 1:29 pm
Mike, don’t be silly, having better universities requires both that there are adequate resources and that those resources are well spent. If the resources are not provided and the sectors independence is reduced, the sector will decline, no matter how well the money we received in the past has been spent.
August 24, 2009 at 3:22 pm
Well if you look at University rankings and what influences them, for example
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=407247
you will find that about 30% of the score can be directly influenced by more spending (Staff/Student Ratio, International Students, International Staff). But its not all about money. The other 70% of components depend on Academic Peer review, Employers opinion and research outputs (actually not research funding per se). I see no reason that given a sudden withdrawal of funding that ones score under these last 3 categories should instantly collapse. However (if the money has been wisely spent during the good times) they should continue on an upwards trajectory, even if we were to lose out on Staff/Student ratio etc. However I agree that if funding were cut off for a prolonged period then all the indicators would eventually point downwards, and one could find oneself in a position not dissimilar to that of Newcastle United
August 24, 2009 at 3:31 pm
Why not; peer review scores rely on maintaining good research, this requires resources, funding for graduate students, post-docs, equipment; recruitments and retention of internationally competitive staff. Why would we continue to improve if we lost support for these things. I agree, there is a timescale for any decline and the loss of reputation and research output, won’t instant, but the timescale can be estimated from the speed with which we gained in these metrics.