Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 1 March 2022

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills

Future Funding of Higher Education: Discussion (Resumed)

Mr. Tim Conlon:

We can drive the agenda. Institutions are autonomous in respect of academic matters such as student entry, programme content and so on, so we do not want to interfere with that autonomy. We can hold institutions to account. We have a very detailed process called the strategic dialogue, where we meet institutions on an annual basis and talk about their performance with reference to key performance indicators. We can use that process to ask what they are doing to improve the number of students from varied backgrounds on medical programmes, for example.