UNIVERSITIES IN Ireland have been slow to respond to public concerns about the workload of academics and their pay levels, according to the former president of DCU.
Prof Ferdinand von Prondzynski, principal of Robert Gordon College in Aberdeen, said Irish universities were now facing so many difficult issues because they have not been good at establishing public confidence.
Prof von Prondzynski was speaking at a symposium in TCD – T he Idea of a University in the 21st Century.
“In fact Irish universities are hugely successful,” he said. “They have performed extraordinarily well on very limited resources.
“They are now able to compete with higher education institutions throughout the developed world.”
However, they had not been able to escape public scepticism.
“There are worries about the quality of degree programmes and the standards achieved by graduates. There are criticisms of academic pay and, more particularly, the pay of senior officers and presidents. There are concerns about academic workloads. In short, there is a view that universities lack a degree of accountability and transparency.”
Universities, he said, had been slow to respond to this and the result was a threat of State control and burgeoning bureaucratic restraints.
Prof von Prondzynski said universities needed to protect their autonomy and freedom of action, but they also needed to persuade both the Government and the public that they would exercise this responsibly. “They need to engage their internal stakeholders and ensure that there is organisational cohesion and a unity of purpose.
“Universities need to reform their governance and decision-making at their own initiative and make it fully transparent.
“In return, the Government must ensure that universities have access to adequate resources.”
TCD provost Prof Patrick Prendergast said a conversation about how universities operated and how universities, as public sector bodies, served the public good, was needed
Higher education, he added, was both a private and a public good. “This duality is important. It helps us understand our role as educators and informs our view of how higher education should be funded.”
He said President Michael D Higgins centralised universities’ crucial role in safeguarding democracy and reforming society in his recent address to the National University of Ireland.
Higher education was clearly an advantage to the graduate, who left college furnished with the skills to pursue an interesting career and lead a fulfilling life.
However, Prof Prendergast pointed out how it also benefited society at large in terms of educating doctors, teachers, lawyers, writers, scientists, engineers, historians, entrepreneurs and others who provided essential services and drove the economy.
“This has always been the case, since long before the phrase ‘knowledge economy’ was ever invented, but the value of higher education to society at large has now intensified.
“A society that lives by its wits, so to speak, and not through low labour rates or the exploitation of natural resources, needs to have people educated to the highest international levels if it is to create employment in a global economy,” said Prof Prendergast.
“I believe working towards such a society is the right aspiration for this country, although I know certain economists disagree and believe that we should be taking another route – towards a low labour rate economy for instance.”
