Grace O'Sullivan (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 21:

In page 28, line 2, to delete "to at least honours bachelor degree level".

The purpose of the Bill is to provide the regions that currently do not enjoy the presence of a full university access to a higher standard of third-level education. This is an aim I support. We must ensure the provisions of the Bill do not mean that it will amount to a mere rebranding exercise, and these amendments are aimed at ensuring there is no fall off in standards from the existing national norms for education. The worst–case scenario outcome for the Bill would be that it would amount to a huge and expensive rebranding exercise that amalgamated campuses at great cost and for no subsequent benefit increase in quality.

Amendment No. 21 seeks to ensure that a large swathe of students - all those from levels 6 to level 8 - are captured by the section, which sets out the calculation of the eligibility criteria for applicant bodies.This would have the effect of dramatically distorting the figures relating to the number of students engaged in what we now consider academic research. In a worst-case scenario, students in taught level 9 programmes could be redesignated with, for example, course work reassigned as part of their thesis, thereby pushing them above the 60% final project compliance as laid out in the Bill. This sleight of hand could mean easy compliance with the 4% figure, without anything close to genuine research work being carried out. Such research work, as we currently understand it, is defined by Quality and Qualifications Ireland as involving numerous essential aspects, including a research strategy, research infrastructure, appropriate supervisory arrangements, capacity and more. It is essential that these standards should not be compromised.

Under existing definitions, none of the potential applicants would meet the 4% research requirement. Waterford Institute of Technology, WIT, would be closest at 4.2%. However, with level 6, 7 and 8 students removed from consideration, all but Galway Mayo IT leap well past it. Is it seriously being proposed that the current level of research in the existing institutions is more than adequate and that this is the level of research we would hold them to as technological universities? Research is at the core of all true academia - the generation of new knowledge and innovation, the sparking of new thoughts and the development of new ideas. I hope the Minister of State will accept that the current wording in the Bill would set the bar far too low in this regard.

Along the same lines, amendment No. 23 seeks to pursue the same principle with regard to the academic staff that make up the teaching staff at the technological universities in the future. The current level of those with a PhD in third-level teaching staff in our universities is 81%. Considering the development and increased standards in academia in Ireland and the world over the past few decades, it would be unlikely for a new university hire to have attained such a level nowadays. However, stipulations in the legislation would again allow for a massaging of the figures. Under the existing definition in section 28(1)(c), all institutes of technology are comfortably in excess of the target of 45% with PhD or equivalent. By artificially suppressing the number of lecturers included for the purposes of the assessment, only a tiny number of the total staff would be included, virtually guaranteeing automatic compliance with an artificially low number. These issues matter because standards in our colleges and universities matter. I implore the Minister of State to think about the effect that such a low bar would have, not only on the operation of the technological universities but also on their long-term viability as respected institutions.