OECD's Education Committee to Make Recommendations on Irish Higher Education

08/09/2004 - A special session of the OECD's Education Committee will be held in Dublin on 16 September 2004 to discuss the Review of Higher Education Policy in Ireland. Among other things, the Review Report will recommend that students for first degrees be required to bear some of the costs of their higher education.

Several options are proposed, including re-introduction of fees. The Report will also recommend a significantly reformed, means-tested student support scheme and a student grant scheme to assist low-income and other special-needs students.

The Review, conducted under the Education Committee's programme of Reviews of National Policies for Education, was requested by Ireland's Minister of Education and Science, Noel Dempsey, TD. Full details of the Review's recommendations will be published at a news conference with Mr. Dempsey on 16 September. Details of the news conference will be made available by Mr. Dempsey's office in due course.

The Terms of Reference for the Review cover the whole higher or tertiary education system and were set in a context of the Government's strategic objective of its higher education system being among the best in the OECD, in quality and levels of participation, and helping to create a world class research, development and innovation capacity. The Review was asked to evaluate how well the tertiary education sector was meeting these strategic objectives and to make recommendations for further progress.

Ireland was one of the first European countries to grasp the economic importance of education. The Irish tertiary education system has performed well: it has expanded its student numbers by about 2% per annum since the mid 1960s and has reached an age participation rate of 53% with a higher than European average of graduates in science and technology; and, since the late 1990s, it has increased the focus of its research with the support of selective research funding.

The system is now at a crossroads, however, and the Report identifies new challenges that will have to be overcome if the Government's ambitions are to be realised. The Report makes a series of recommendations that call for significant structural changes in the following areas:

• Strategic steering of the tertiary education system
• Governance and management of higher education institutions (HEIs)
• Strategic management of research, R&D and innovation and internationalisation
• Access and participation
• Investment in the tertiary education sector.

The Report says that Ireland cannot develop a globally-competitive tertiary education system and research capability without high levels of investment in tertiary education, but concludes that this investment will not be possible without some private contribution from students, through fees or other means.

The Report stresses the importance of maintaining high levels of investment in tertiary education without which it will not be possible for Ireland to develop the globally competitive tertiary education system and research capability that it seeks.  But the education budget is under severe pressure from competing demands elsewhere in the public sector and in the education sector, where Ireland's expenditure is below the OECD average.  The economic and fiscal realities facing Ireland mean that relying on state funding alone will be insufficient.