The panic issuing from the 7 heads of the 7 universities, through the obliging offices of Irish Times journalist, Sean Flynn, is palpable. Just as the remove of a thunderstorm can be gauged by counting the seconds between lightening and thunder, so too does the frequency of their 'appeals to reason' reflect the likelihood of university provision in the south east region. 6 days was the previous count. 1 day the last. These 'appeals to reason' are interesting in that the arguments contained within them tend to be minimally rational, little based on empirical evidence and generally of an emotive or rabble-rousing character. A previous post, The technological university and its vested interests, critically analyses some of these arguments, made in a previous (November) article in the, by now familiar, series. The next-to-latest incarnation is Irish Times: Third-level presidents oppose new university. In this post, I will mainly examine this article.

The article begins with the statement, "ANY GOVERNMENT plan to establish a new university in the southeast makes no sense when the current system is seriously underfunded and battling for its survival, according to the seven university presidents."

Whilst quality arguments are often the weapons of choice, this article is mainly concerned with cost, an issue very close to the hearts of citizens in these recessionary times. However, contained within this statement is both an assumption and a red-herring: the assumption is that creating a university in the south east would cost money (when it will replace two IoTs), and the red-herring is the suggestion that an upgrade will impact the funding of the university sector in a meaningful way. I will tackle the 'cost' of the technological university in the south east below, but first I want to address that other bugbear of the university sector, that "universities are chronically underfunded (and a new university would make it worse)".

The argument has been made continuously and strongly that universities are on the verge of collapse, such is their dearth of funding. The solutions that are lobbied for are for the creation of whole new revenue streams, such as the re-introduction of student fees, which would deliver a dramatic boost to their funding situation. In short, we are not talking about universities seeking, or in their terms requiring, an incremental boost to their recurrent funding, but something far more significant and game changing. In light of this, how would a south east university shake up this picture? Lets imagine for the sake of argument that the technological university would receive 30% more recurrent funding than their constituent IoTs do at present (highly unlikely in this environment) and that this increase made the new university 40% more expensive to run than the average university in the current sector (because the merger is handled badly). These numbers are plucked out of the air but should be indicative of a bad case scenario. Now let's imagine the government gives no extra funding whatsoever to the sector as a whole, and merely diverts the funds from pre-existing universities to the new south east university. Given that, how much of a percentage decline in recurrent funding could each university expect on average? My calculations give 4.2%. This is essentially an upper maximum of the hurt, given a combination of really bad outcomes to the upgrade process and absolutely no additional funding forthcoming from the government to the sector. The real number will probably be much smaller. (And it is in fact possible that the new university may be less expensive to run in the future than WIT and ITC are today.) The essential point here is that the marginal loss to each existing university would be minimal and would have no material impact on the university sector's core funding problem, as they see it. The level of funding that the universities are seeking would dwarf any impact of the accession or otherwise of a south east technological university.

In fact the article goes on to say "The paper points out how current funding for universities is set to fall by a cumulative 6 per cent to 2015, despite record student demand. There is no indication, it says, that any additional increases in the student charge – if they are introduced – will do any more than offset reductions in exchequer funding." Even this cumulative 6% drop dwarfs a possible 1% or 2% one-off drop that a generously funded new university in the south east might necessitate.

Leaving aside the "pigs in the trough" debate, what about the cost of the creation of a technological university in the south east itself? The following, bemusing statement is made,

"We know that the system is seriously underfunded. Within the system, there are indications that the IoT sector is relatively better funded than the universities. Therefore, any plans to establish new universities cannot result in a further hollowing out or cannibalisation of university funding."

This statement appears to simultaneously assert that a) IoTs are better funded than universities and b) a new university would cannibalise existing university funding. It seems that in their rush to land blows, they have contradicted themselves. If IoTs are costing more than universities, then we should expect that one university should cost less (at least per student head) than the two IoTs it replaces, therefore upgrading WIT and ITC would make cost sense. Far from cannibalising the university sector, the upgrade may in fact pay dividends that accrue to the university sector as a whole.

Interestingly, this analysis appears in a "paper" "prepared by the Irish Universities Association for the HEA". Is it a secret paper? One suspects that Mr. Flynn has reminded the 7 heads of the universities, that the same paper can in fact be reported twice, first as leak, second as official release.

I just want to address one quote from the latest article, Irish Times: University heads deny accusations of elitism:

"He said it would not serve the country well if we had a range of new universities which do not “walk, talk or act like” a university. He pointed out that the average number of PhD students in the institutes was about 30 per college, compared with an average of over 1,000 in the universities."

This point is essentially true, in that, actually, IoTs have hardly any PhD students (far less than 30) on average, whilst universities have many PhD students enrolled (figures available on HEA website). WIT had 49 PhD students enrolled in 09/10, whilst NUIM, the smallest university, had 401 PhD students in the same year. WIT had 91 (research) + 319 (taught) = 410 masters students enrolled in that year whilst NUIM had 78 (research) + 433 (taught) = 512 enrolled. So there is not a huge difference in the masters stakes. There are two obvious points that one might make here:

1. The fact that IoTs have only a very restricted, delegated authority to award PhDs (and indeed ability to put on new courses/expand into new areas) is surely a factor in the lower number of PhD students. (In other words, the lower number of PhD students is largely a function of the restrictive IoT remit, and is therefore a self-fulfilling prophecy.)
2. What is proposed is not a conventional university but a "technological university", as proposed by Hunt and refined by Prof. Marginson. The idea is that technological universities will retain an applied focus and will therefore be as concerned about certificates and ordinary degrees as they will be about masters and PhDs. The criteria for technological universities are therefore more relaxed on the higher end. When I stacked up WIT against an early version of the criteria in the article, The mysterious appearance of Technological University criteria and who will qualify, WIT seemed ready to take the step up.

When the "University heads deny accusations of elitism," I am inclined to believe them. They are merely being cartelist. They, and their earthly oracle, Sean Flynn, are fighting a political battle for parochial goals. Otherwise, they would write proper, reasoned articles, with impartial analyses, rather than than the usual rabble-rousing tripe. Hunt has gone from being a genius, when he said there should be no more universities, to being dismissed, now that his technological university suggestion has been taken seriously. Prof. Marginson, who, even in his report on the criteria for upgrade to technological university status, flagged the issue of interference from education elites in this country (see last 4 paragraphs here), has never been given the oxygen of a mention by his Irish colleagues. It is to be hoped that these latest broadsides from the Irish higher education aristocracy are merely the last sting of a dying wasp. If they are concerned about costs in the university sector, I would be only too happy to point out to them universities which could be usefully merged in regions where there is an over provision.