SIPTU Liberty Newspaper June 2014

22
Liberty
JUNE 2014
Defend the Irish University
Access denied – Trinity College
Dublin: Irish universities are in
danger of being captured by
business interests.
Photo: Sam Boal/Photocall Ireland
Grant Thornton
is an assurance,
tax and advisory
firm with a
declared Irish
revenue of
$63 million and
a global revenue
of $3.8 billion. It
claims to be " the
fastest growing
firm in Ireland".
We must defend
our universities
A report by Grant Thornton on the Irish
university system is flawed. It sees higher
education as something to be subjected
to narrow profit interests rather than as a
public good, writes Ronnie Munck of
Defend the Irish University
DEFEND the Irish University,
represents the
interests of those
who teach, research
and work in higher education.
Our Charter (defendtheuniversity.ie)
has gathered over 1,000
signatories, and we are now
working closely with the Union
of Students in Ireland in pursuit
of a higher education system
that is recognised as a public
good and which cannot and
should not be subjected to narrow
market and private profit
interests.
Grant Thornton is an assurance,
tax and advisory firm with a declared
Irish revenue of $63 million
and a global revenue of $3.8 billion.
It claims to be " the fastest
growing firm in Ireland". They are
a big player in business consultancy
and have taken it upon
themselves to produce a series of
reports on the state of higher education
in the Republic, similar to
exercises carried out by them in
the UK .
However, their first report on
the financial health of Irish Higher
Level Institutions paints a sorry
picture, and one of which higher
education staff in the frontline are
all too well aware. Between 2007
and 2011 student numbers across
the sector rose by 26% while the
State grant felt by 25%. We might
also add that staff income dropped
by more than 20% over the same
period, and numbers were reduced
through the Employment Control
Framework.
Looking to the future, student
numbers are forecast to grow by
more than 25% by 2030. In terms
of its contribution, the State grant
has declined from 40% of the total
in 2007 to 25% in 2011. The sector
has reached an inflection point, argues
the report, or what the rest of
us would call a crisis.
This report does not even
vaguely understand that education
is, in fact, a public good. It tells us
that stripped of non-profitable
courses and with its main functions
outsourced it might be seen
as a sector in which private equity
firms would be interested. Within
higher education we now see the
emergence of closely integrated
economic, political and State interests
coming together behind this
agenda. However the stark reality
is that the crisis faced by higher education
will simply not be solved
by a dollop of private equity involvement.
No amount of private
colleges, on-line or otherwise, can
substitute for the massive infrastructure
and long history of the
higher education system.
The time is clearly now ripe to
present an alternative to the market
non-solution presented by the
Grant Thornton report . Certainly,
neither higher education staff nor
students should, or can, be asked
to suffer any further. Staff should
not be subject to any further deterioration
in their pay and conditions.
The current moves towards
ever greater casualisation of staff
need to be halted.
As to students they already pay
a very high charge (€3,000 per student)
which places an unsustainable
burden on many households.
Current discussions around student
loans should be halted and a
cap placed on all charges. Higher
education is a public good and society
at large needs to have a
greater say in the future. A broad
social engagement with the future
of higher education could produce
a momentum towards adequate
funding for a higher education system
geared towards social needs
and not private profit.
Ronnie Munck is a lecturer in DCU and a
member of the DCU SIPTU Section Committee