CENTRE for CROSS BORDER STUDIES

Press Release 10 October 2002

A Higher Education Conference

Universities in Ireland have a "moral responsibility" to show leadership in cross-border dialogue and to see North/South co-operation "not as incidental, but as one of their primary responsibilities", the world education authority, Professor Malcolm Skilbeck, has told a North/South higher education conference in Armagh.

Professor Skilbeck told the two-day conference (Thursday 10^th- Friday 11^th October), which is being attended by the heads of seven of the nine universities on the island of Ireland, that "the universities are very well placed to become leaders in the cross-border dialogue that is so badly needed as a counter-balance to the tensions and violence in other spheres."

He said that this was "pre-eminently a leadership issue" for the universities. "They need to report and communicate to a wider public what they are doing in this regard, to undertake and publicise new initiatives, and to establish as part of their internal organisation mechanisms and procedures to facilitate and extend cross-border co-operation.  This is a challenge which should draw in presidents and vice-chancellors and their deputies, deans, senior administrators and heads of department."

Professor Skilbeck, an Australian, is a former Deputy Director for Education at the OECD. He is the author of a number of influential international reports on higher education, including 'Industry-university partnerships in the curriculum: trends and developments in OECD countries' and 'The University Challenged: a review of international trends and issues with particular reference to Ireland.' In the early 1970s he was professor of education at the University of Ulster.

He told the conference that Irish universities would "have to become more entrepreneurial and more accustomed to the world of contract-based funding," following the example of their British and Australian counterparts. Universities in the Republic "will be increasingly subjected to the rigours of appraisal and public accountability that the UK universities have faced in recent years."

In Australia "in a very short space of time universities have become accustomed to seeing themselves as businesses, and this is nowhere more evident than in the highly successful campaign over the past two decades to draw upon the international pool of fee-paying students."

Irish universities had to become "more effective managers", he went on. "This is sometimes seen as giving rise to a conflict between so-called managerialism and collegiality, with the former regarded as an example of the capture of the university by commercial values, and the latter as the traditional essence of the true university."

"In my view it is foolish to present these as alternatives, since the modern university is a very large, complex, costly and publicly visible entity which must be well-governed and managed while remaining true to its fundamental values and purposes. The 'moral' role of the university and its ethical quality in fact depend on its survival, and its capacity to create new structures and forms of organisation which are effective, economical, transparent and have the wide assent of the community of scholars and students on the one hand, and the public domain on the other."

The Northern Ireland Minister for Employment and Learning, Ms Carmel Hanna MLA, who opened the conference jointly with the Irish Minister of Education and Science, Mr Noel Dempsey TD, said: "I believe that North/South co-operation offers us the potential to enhance higher education standards on the island. This in turn will allow us to develop the island as a centre of excellence to attract students and investors from abroad, and thus make a significant contribution to our social, cultural and economic development."

Mr Dempsey said that, through its unprecedented financial commitments in the National Development Plan, the Irish Government recognised the importance of research and development as critical to the success of the Irish economy. He said the success of the economy over the past decade had been based on, among other things, the availability of an efficient, young and well-educated workforce, which is the product of our education system.  The Minister added:

"We now need to focus on the next phase of economic development in Ireland, which is based on the premise that, as we become wealthier, our cost advantages could erode relative to direct competitors for foreign investment in Eastern Europe and South East Asia.   This challenges the Irish economy, and indeed that of the island of Ireland, to achieve higher value investments, based on sourcing an increasing proportion of the intellectual and knowledge content of goods and services." 

He went on:

"This concept of knowledge as the basic economic resource underpinning the knowledge-based innovation society brings the development of and support for a strong research capacity to the forefront of national policy. I suggest that this is a goal which must be shared by all of us on this island."

The Minister also acknowledged the challenges and opportunities emerging from the increasing globalisation of higher education, and stated that this is an issue which is currently being addressed by Ministers for Education within the OECD context, and more particularly at EU level.  Mr. Dempsey said:

"The EU Commission's recent proposal for a series of initiatives - Erasmus World - in support of the objective of enhancing quality in higher education and promoting Europe as a centre of excellence in learning was one to be welcomed by all.  This should provide the context for further collaborative actions among institutions, which would help promote the island of Ireland as a centre of excellence for higher education services - an objective which I fully share with Minister Hanna" 

The Minister also took the opportunity to confirm that plans to launch a North/South research initiative under the National Development Plan were nearing completion, and that details of the scheme would be made available in the near future.

Other key conference speakers included the former US Secretary of Education in the Clinton administration, Mr Richard Riley; the Director-General of Education and Culture in the European Commission, Mr Nikolaus van der Pas, and the Chief Executive of the Higher Education Funding Council for England, Sir Howard Newby.

The conference, under the title 'Ireland as a Centre of Excellence in Third Level Education', has been organised on behalf of the Department for Employment and Learning (Belfast) and the Department of Education and Science (Dublin) by the Centre for Cross Border Studies.

Further information from:

Andy Pollak director, Centre for Cross Border Studies

Tel. 028-3751-1550 (from Republic of Ireland: 048-3751-1550)

Mobile: 0771-5042122 (0044771 from Republic)