Higher Education in Ireland

Practices, Policies and Possibilities

Andrew Loxley, Aidan Seery, John Walsh

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781137289872
• eBook ISBN: 9781137289889
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Administration

This collection provides the first in-depth, interdisciplinary and over-arching review of higher education in Ireland, situating higher education within the socio-cultural, political and historical context of the country over the past 40 years and the development of European and national policies.

1

The Transformation of Higher Education in Ireland, 1945–80

John Walsh

Introduction

The Irish higher education (HE) system has undergone a far-reaching transformation over the past half a century, driven in part by changing social and cultural norms but primarily by government intervention linked to the dominant national priority of economic development. The origins of far-reaching policy change can be traced to the period immediately following the Second World War, when a small, ‘elite’ Irish HE system struggled to cope with the consequences of long-term official neglect of third-level education, combined with the first indications of increasing social demand. A dramatic change in government policy towards higher education, combined with the impact of increased participation in the second-level sector, stimulated a long-term transformation of higher education in the 30-year period from the 1950s to the 1980s. The sea change in HE policy early in this period was driven by changing attitudes among domestic political elites, linked to the influence of international ideas mediated through the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Government policies focused on quantitative expansion of participation, coupled with a far-reaching diversification at system, institutional and subject levels to meet perceived economic requirements for a more highly skilled workforce and accommodate increasing social demand for third-level education (Ó Buachalla, 1984, pp.165–7; Clancy, 1989 in Mulcahy and O’Sullivan, pp.99–150).

Martin Trow’s theoretical model for the development of higher education indicates a progression from ‘elite’ to ‘mass’ systems of higher education and ultimately to ‘universal’ access (Trow, 1974, pp.61–2). He suggests that the entry of over 15% of the relevant school-leaving age cohort to higher education marked the transition from traditional ‘elite’ institutions to ‘mass’ education, with 50% identified as a similar threshold for ‘universal’ education (Ibid., pp.61–2). Perhaps the most valuable insight of Trow’s model was not its concept of linear progression which was subsequently questioned, not least by Trow himself (Clancy, 1989, p.100), but its focus on the transformative nature of expansion which exerted a far-reaching influence at all levels of institutional life, work and culture: ‘Mass higher education systems differ from elite higher education not only quantitatively but qualitatively . . . the differences between these phases are quite fundamental and pervade every aspect of higher education’ (Trow, 1974, p.61).

The Irish HE system followed a similar trajectory to Western European norms, although it began to expand somewhat later than some developed European states, including Sweden, Denmark and West Germany (Trow, 1974, p.61). O’Sullivan suggests that religious ideals associated with a dominant ‘theocentric’ paradigm, which provided the ideological backdrop for educational policy in the first generation of the Irish state, were gradually displaced from the 1950s by a ‘mercantile’ paradigm with economic considerations at its core (O’Sullivan, 2005, p.104). Human capital theory, which held that investment in people produced a greater return of investment than investment in physical capital, emerged as a major strand of international economic thinking in the early 1960s (O’Sullivan, 2005, p.143). Various studies underline that the Irish political and administrative system enthusiastically embraced ‘human capital’ theory as the primary institutional rationale for investment in education (Coolahan, 2008; O’Sullivan, 2005; Walsh, 2009). This broad ideological reorientation underpinned a gradual transformation of Irish higher education from an ‘elite’ to a ‘mass’ system as identified by Trow (1974, pp.61–3). Yet while economic imperatives undoubtedly played a crucial part in the rapid expansion of the system, vocational considerations co-existed with increasing pressures created by social demand for third-level places. Moreover, political elites sought to legitimise policy changes through an appeal to political and egalitarian objectives, seeking to demonstrate that their agenda was not exclusively defined by economic priorities.

An elite system

Higher education institutions (HEIs) in Ireland historically enjoyed a high degree of institutional autonomy and were not the focus of significant state intervention following the foundation of the Irish Free State in 1922. Yet autonomy came at a price: higher education occupied an insignificant and almost invisible position during the first generation of the independent Irish state (Coolahan, 2008, p.261). The four established universities, Trinity College Dublin (TCD) and the three constituent colleges of the National University of Ireland (NUI), were largely left to their own devices by the Irish government. TCD operated in an inhospitable cultural and political context due to its traditional association with the dominant Protestant elite in the nineteenth century and to the firm opposition of the Catholic Church to ‘neutral’ or secular educational institutions. The Catholic bishops regarded the university colleges of the NUI as acceptable institutions for the education of Catholics, but opposed the attendance of Catholic students at TCD since the late nineteenth century, partly on the basis of its Protestant tradition but even more because it was considered to be a repository of secular and anti-Catholic influences (MFS 8223, Commission on Higher Education, 26 May 1961, pp.141–61). The hierarchy re-affirmed their policy in 1956, at the instigation of John Charles McQuaid, the archbishop of Dublin, a formidable exponent of traditional Catholic teaching: the bishops adopted a comprehensive regulation prohibiting the attendance of Catholics at TCD without the explicit permission of the archbishop (Lydon, 1992 in Holland, pp.39–43). The NUI enjoyed a very different cultural inheritance, due to its origins in 1908 as a non-denominational institution which was explicitly designed to offer higher education acceptable to the Catholic majority. Moreover, many students and staff from its constituent colleges were associated with the struggle for national independence. The colleges of the NUI, particularly University College Dublin (UCD), enjoyed significant connections with the political elite of the new state: indeed the first two Ministers for Education, Eoin MacNéill and John Marcus O’Sullivan, held university chairs in UCD. Moreover, Eamon de Valera, the dominant political figure of nationalist Ireland, was also the chancellor of the NUI throughout his lengthy public career (Walsh, 2008 in Dunne et al., pp.135–45). Yet the prominence of NUI graduates, professors and members of the Senate in the political elite did not translate into a high public profile for the institution or generous financial support for its colleges. The protectionist agenda adopted by de Valera’s governments from the early 1930s focused firmly on economic self-sufficiency and development of native industry behind high tariff barriers. Higher education was virtually invisible in the rhetoric of protectionist economic development. University leaders also adopted a very low profile and did little to encourage communication with a wider public or even to highlight their increasingly acute accommodation needs publicly (Coolahan, 2003, p.763). The universities featured hardly at all in a dominant national discourse marked by traditional Catholicism, protectionism and social conservatism.

Whatever their cultural or religious differences, the universities shared similar characteristics: they attracted only a small minority of the population, were severely under-resourced and were oriented strongly towards training for the professions. A seminal report on long-term needs for educational resources, Investment in Education, which was produced by an Irish survey team under the auspices of the OECD between 1962 and 1965, graphically highlighted the restrictive and elitist nature of university institutions (Government of Ireland, 1965, p.172). Investment indicated that only 2% of the population aged 15–19 and 3.4% of the population aged 20–24 at the time of the 1961 census were enrolled in third-level education, excluding theological training for the priesthood (Government of Ireland, 1965, p.120). Moreover, the report underlined that universities were predominantly the preserve of the upper middle class, noting that ‘the strong association between university entrance and social group is unmistakable’ (Government of Ireland, 1965, p.172). Indeed 65% of university entrants drawn from the Leaving Certificate cohort in 1963 (the overwhelming majority of entrants) were the children of professionals, employers and higher white-collar employees: only 2% of university students were drawn from the unskilled and semi-skilled manual category, while 4% were the children of the unemployed or widows (Ibid., p.172). Entry to universities was almost exclusively determined by social and family background, and university education remained the preserve of a small privileged elite until the mid-1960s.

The policy of successive governments towards higher education between 1922 and the late 1950s amounted to little more than benign neglect. The annual appropriations for higher education outlined in the reports of the Public Accounts Committee reveal a strikingly low level of public investment in higher education up to the late 1950s. The net expenditure from the exchequer for universities and colleges in 1948–49 was £323,916, a mere 0.5% of overall exchequer spending voted by the Oireachtas (Public Accounts Committee, 1950, p.103). This minimal allocation increased only marginally over the following decade: the comparable level of state expenditure on higher education in 1958–59 amounted to 0.62% of the overall appropriations (Public Accounts Committee, 1959, p.88). The very limited increase in state funding for higher education coincided with a gradual increase of student enrolments in the period following the Second World War, which turned out to be a prelude to a spectacular expansion over the following generation. The number of full-time students in the four universities doubled from 6,796 in 1948–49 to 13,006 in 1964–65, with the increase being particularly marked in the colleges of the NUI (Government of Ireland, 1967, p.21). This represented a very limited expansion in the level of participation in third-level education, but the universities were obliged to accommodate increasing enrolments over a 20-year period when there was no significant capital investment by the state in university education (Government of Ireland, 1959, p.126). The inadequate funding of the institutions certainly reflected the economic weakness of the independent Irish state, but it was not simply about poverty. The absence of significant state investment underlined the low priority attached by the political and official elite to higher education and the absence of public debate on the place of universities in society.

University education was strongly associated with training for the professions. John Henry Newman’s ideal of liberal education, emphasising the cultivation of knowledge as an end in itself, commanded respect within the universities but had little resonance within Irish society (Newman, 1852). Taoiseach Eamon de Valera expressed a widely held view when he told the Seanad in May 1940 that training for a professional career was the essential role of the university in Ireland:

[T]he modern universities have very largely to be professional schools, but the fact is that in our universities at present, excepting those particularly fortunate in having brains as well as means, the students have to think when they come to the universities of a career, and that they cannot live in them for a prolonged period.

(Seanad Éireann, vol.24, col.1393–4, 15 May 1940)

de Valera’s view was notable not simply for his pragmatic view of the Irish university but for his open acknowledgement that entry to universities was determined primarily by means rather than merit. The composition of the student body certainly underlined a strong popular attachment to professional careers. The colleges of the NUI saw a steady increase in the proportion of students pursuing professional qualifications, particularly in medicine, dentistry and engineering, between 1929–30 and 1947–48 (Coolahan, 2003, p.767). Arts and humanities disciplines continued to attract a significant cohort of students during this period, while science and commerce languished, attracting a relatively small and in some cases a declining segment of students. Coolahan suggests that the underdeveloped state of the Irish economy up to the late 1950s helps to explain the neglect of science, commerce and agriculture (Coolahan, 2003, p.767). Certainly, the lack of economic opportunity within Ireland encouraged a focus on stable occupations, including the professions and the public service. Yet the strong demand among parents and students for entry to the humanities and the professions also reflected a profound social and cultural conservatism, which privileged professional status over ‘practical’ or technical disciplines.

The underdevelopment of higher technical education was a particular feature of a neglected tertiary system. The universities dominated the small HE sector: only 660 students were pursuing higher-level technical or vocational courses on a national basis in 1964 (Government of Ireland, 1965, p.4). The vast majority of these were concentrated in the colleges of technology offered by the City of Dublin Vocational Education Committee (CDVEC). The opportunities for higher education for most vocational school students were poor to non-existent, as the only institutions offering higher-level courses in technical education were the colleges of technology in Dublin, Crawford Municipal Technical Institute in Cork and a centre specialising in hotel management in Shannon: there were no technical institutions serving rural areas. The underdevelopment of technical education was the logical consequence of a traditionalist consensus in Irish education, shared by ministers, officials and prominent private stakeholders, for the first generation of the independent Irish state. This conservative consensus was characterised by a timid and tentative approach on the part of the Department of Education and a general deference towards the powerful religious interests within the educational system, particularly the Catholic Church. The traditionalist approach placed a low value on vocational and technical studies, emphasising the primacy of the humanities, classical studies and the Irish language. It was not accidental that higher education remained an underdeveloped ‘elite’ sector well into the middle of the twentieth century.

A tale of two commissions

A far-reaching transformation of HE policy began in the late 1950s. Séan Lemass, who replaced de Valera as Taoiseach in 1959, oversaw a radical reorientation of economic policies, marked particularly by a gradual transition from a protectionist regime to free trade and from self-sufficiency to sustained promotion of foreign investment (Murphy, 2009, pp.302–9). The Department of Education, led by a number of younger, more dynamic ministers appointed by Lemass, adopted equality of opportunity as a key policy objective by the mid-1960s. The major reforms adopted by the government at post-primary level, notably the introduction of free second-level education and raising of the statutory school leaving age to 15 by 1972, contributed to an extraordinary expansion of enrolments (Walsh, 2009, pp.211–2), which intensified societal demand for access to higher education and helped to ensure that it became a focus of political action.

Changing attitudes among domestic political elites dovetailed with an emerging international consensus that investment in education at all levels was essential to economic development. The OECD promoted investment in ‘human capital’ among the developed countries of the West from the early 1960s, identifying the development of education and scientific research as vital elements in achieving economic growth. International influences mediated primarily through the OECD contributed significantly to a radical change of direction by the political and administrative elite (Walsh, 2011 pp.365–81).

The limitations of institutional provision were underlined by a series of expert group reports, of which ‘Investment in Education’ was the most significant. The first critical re-appraisal of the university system was offered by a commission on accommodation needs, established by de Valera’s final government in 1957. Justice Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh chaired a small commission composed mainly of members drawn from the business community and government departments, including the stockbroker J.J. Davy and Aodhogán O’Rahilly, a director of Bord na Móna (Irish Press, September 1957). Jack Lynch, the newly appointed Minister for Education, delegated much of the planning required for the development of the university sector to the commission. TCD was not included in its terms of reference, not least because the government wished to avoid any consideration of merger between TCD and UCD. The transfer of UCD from Earlsfort Terrace to a new site at Belfield was vigorously promoted by Dr Michael Tierney, president of UCD (1947–64), but opposed by a section of the college’s academic staff; a close association with TCD was floated as an alternative by Prof. John J. O’Meara, professor of classical languages in UCD (O’Meara, 1958, pp.18–9). O’Rahilly also sought to have an option of amalgamation considered by the commission. But de Valera, who maintained regular contact with Tierney, was supportive of the proposed transfer of UCD to Belfield (Walsh, 2008, pp.44–55). The Taoiseach may also have wished to avoid raising the politically explosive question of merger, which was likely to provoke conflict with the Catholic bishops. Cardinal John D’Alton, archbishop of Armagh, warned publicly on 23 June 1958 against ‘any ill-considered experiment in the education field’, singling out a merger between TCD and UCD as ‘a union of incompatibles’ (Irish Press, 24 June 1958).

The commission made a compelling case for investment by the state in HE, highlighting the stark consequences of the absence of state support for capital development in the universities for a quarter of a century: ‘The result has been that the Colleges have become more and more over-crowded, and arrears of building have been accumulating’ (Government of Ireland, 1959, p.126). The commission emphasised the case for urgent remedial action by the state:

The problem, however, cannot, in our opinion, await a protracted solution. Already break-down point [sic] has almost been reached in the colleges . . . Under such conditions the quality and standards of both the teaching and the work of the university cannot for long go unaffected.

(Government of Ireland, 1959, p.128)

The report recommended an am...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction
• 1. The Transformation of Higher Education in Ireland, 1945–80
• 2. A Contemporary History of Irish Higher Education, 1980–2011
• 3. From Seaweed & Peat to Pills & Very Small Things: Knowledge Production and Higher Education in the Irish Context
• 4. Bildung and Life-Long Learning: Emancipation and Control
• 5. Ireland and the Field of Higher Education: A Bourdieusian Perspective
• 6. Prospects for a Private, Indigenous and For-Profit University in Dublin
• 7. Measures and Metrics and Academic Labour
• 8. A Critical Journey Towards Lifelong Learning: Including Non-Traditional Students in University
• 9. Student Experience and Engagement in Higher Education in Ireland
• 10. Bologna: Consonance or Dissonance?
• 11. Changing Curriculum and Assessment Mindsets in Higher Education
• 12. E-Learning and Higher Education – Hyperbole and Reality
• 13. Academic Professional Development in Ireland
• 14. Challenges and Opportunities for Teaching and Learning in Irish Higher Education
• Index