Averil Power (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Senator's Bill on consolidating and improving the higher education sector as an important contribution to the debate on the future of higher education in Ireland. I welcome that the Government will allow the Bill to proceed to Committee Stage. It is a large, complex piece of legislation and it has clearly taken much work to consolidate the existing legislation, so it would be useful to have a detailed discussion on Committee Stage.

The Bill can be divided into four: the restructuring of how State funding is awarded; the restructuring of governance; protection for academics; and the foundation of technological universities. The idea of having a single committee to oversee all State funding is good with respect to the streamlining of the process and ensuring all institutions are under the one grant-awarding body. It is very important to keep higher education institutions competing for funding, as it creates a culture of excellence, with the best departments and staff getting more grants.

It is important that be retained in this or any other new structure. One could debate whether there would be a risk that the university sector would command more funding as a result. We could tease out this issue later. When applying for research grants and other grants over the last few years the IOTs have made significant inroads in the areas of technology and bioscience in particular and this allows them to focus on the niche areas they excel at rather than trying to enter the hotly-contested fields dominated by the universities.

Direct linking between the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform and the HEA is a positive step because it can help ensure less waste in the sector, although I have some concerns about how social science research would do. It is important when we evaluate research proposals that we are not just thinking about the bottom line and whether research will lead to more jobs in the narrower sense. While all research must stand up to scrutiny and represent value for money, it is important to have research in arts, music and all kinds of other areas that might not fit within the narrow context of jobs and technology.

On the restructuring of governance, the Bill provides for an external chairperson of the governing authorities. That is the approach taken in corporate governance in general. Under company law there is a separate chair and CEO and there is a good logic behind that in ensuring a chairperson does not drive his or her own agenda but reflects the consensus of the meeting. TCD does not have an external chairperson. I am not sure if it is the only institution that does not. Senator Barrett is one of the Trinity College Senators. I am not sure if he has consulted with the college on this issue but the advantages of separating the two could be discussed with the college and it would be useful to give it the opportunity to explain why it feels the election of the provost as chairperson is more suitable. I understand the logic behind setting the two and it is extremely important. I have sat as a student representative on a governing authority and one can feel at a disadvantage if the chairperson is reflecting the institutional position rather than the consensus of the meeting. It can be very difficult to argue against that.

While ten years is a very long term of office for chairpersons, it would be worth debating whether four years might be too short. The answer may be somewhere in the middle. In the University of Cambridge the vice-chancellor serves for seven years while in the University of Oxford the term is four years and in Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT, the period is indefinite. In California Institute of Technology, Caltech, the highest ranked institution in The Timeshigher education rankings, it is nine years. My concern about a four-year term is the fact that in institutions and governments people spend the first year or two claiming they are too new to be blamed for anything, that they are just reading themselves into the job and following through on commitments made by the previous administration. My concern is that four years would not be long enough for the chairperson of an institution to have a real, strategic investment and direction, and particularly to reflect the fact that most institutions' strategic plans are five years long. Maybe it would make sense to align the two.

I welcome the emphasis in the governance section on equity of access. Ireland is still behind its target of 54% access to higher education across all socioeconomic backgrounds. There have been major improvements in participation over the last ten or 20 years but only 6% of total entrants come from unskilled and semi-skilled backgrounds. That has remained stagnant. More needs to be done. It is not just a third-level issue but needs to be addressed at primary and preschool levels, ensuring children from disadvantaged areas have the same opportunities as everybody else.

The Bill refers to tenure. I accept Senator Crown's comment on the drawbacks of lifelong tenure and a better balance could be struck than the current one. Tenure is important for giving people freedom and an established position. However, in any job it is important that people are constantly open to evaluation and performance criteria. The Bill also stresses the importance of academic freedom and that is important. Ensuring academics have academic freedom is a fundamental aspect of third-level education, in particular protecting the rights of people who go against the grain. Although I do not agree with everything Professor Morgan Kelly has written, his contribution to the debate is crucial. It is very important we have this protection. I have just come from a committee meeting, as has Senator Jim D'Arcy, where we were discussing the situation in Bahrain, the Royal College of Surgeons and the fact that Irish-trained medics have been fired from their positions for being critical of the Government there. It is very important in a civilised, democratic society that people be free to say whatever they like, even if that goes against everybody else, and that they are protected in their positions and not discriminated against as a result.

The Bill provides for the establishment of a committee to decide whether or not an IOT has reached technological university status and also provides that an institution would not have to merge to become an IOT. The merger idea is a good one. We have too many higher education institutions. We have replication of courses and it would be better from a value for money point of view and from a student point of view to have sharing of courses - there is more of that - and to merge institutions and ensure we are getting the best quality of education in a smaller number of HEIs. It is important that there be clear criteria. One cannot go to a committee and have it decide whether or not it is impressed by an individual proposal. It needs to be thought through in terms of the overall structure, impact and vision for higher education against a clear set of criteria.

I want to mention two other issues.