Party time: the Labour Party

Here is the final manifesto I shall be looking at: the Labour Party. In the education section of the document, the party puts forward a number of reasonable proposals to do with curriculum reform in schools, equity and fairness, and combatting illiteracy. The higher education element in all of this is summed up as follows:

‘Labour supports a vibrant, pluralist third level sector that offers both high quality research and high quality undergraduate teaching.’

For the moment this has not been taken beyond the rather vague rhetoric of that quotation. But there are some specifics, most notably the party’s desire to initiate a reform of the ‘academic contract’. On tuition fees the manifesto repeats the Labour commitment not to reintroduce them, while also suggesting that more radical reform is needed. This is part of a more general trend right now that appears to want to ‘compensate’ for less generous funding with higher levels of bureaucracy and control. Searching around for something to suggest that might bring in money, the manifesto echoes the Fine Gael commitment to seek more international students. Neither party seems to be particularly aware of the already existing level of international recruitment, nor of the complexities involved in any dramatic growth in the number of overseas students.

Overall, Labour’s manifesto has some interesting ideas and promises, but the passages on higher education are perhaps somewhat disappointing. The significant overlap with the equivalent passages in the Fine Gael manifesto suggests that, unless the sector can succeed in rational persuasion, the trend over the coming years will be a continuing erosion of autonomy, a further drop in the available resources and a decline in Ireland’s standing in pursuit of a knowledge society.

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Tags: general election, Irish Labour Party, Labour Party, manifesto

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