The Irish government is clueless and directionless when it comes to third-level education. So says Professor Tom Begley, who is returning to his native America after seven years teaching at UCD. Begley, the dean of business at the university until last weekend, also expressed the desire to see the Leaving Cert blown up.
In an exclusive interview with The Sunday Times before his departure, Begley made clear his disapproval of the way higher education has been managed in Ireland.
“The Irish government does not have a clue on how to manage third-or fourth-level education,” he said. “It has been primarily run by people who are very interested in and familiar with primary and secondary education. I will exempt Ruairi Quinn from that, as he has not been in office long enough and has been showing some good early signs.”
Begley was particularly dismissive of the Hunt report, which was published earlier this year and outlined the national strategy on higher education.
“Most folks in the academic world would say it was a great disappointment,” he said. “It did nothing to set the strategic direction of Irish higher education in the next 20 years. That is what the government is supposed to be relying on, but it is not doing the job.
Advertisement
“The government needs to throw out the Hunt report and start over again. It needs to get some people who are intimately familiar with third-and fourth-level education. “I’m sure the folks in the Department of Education and the HEA [Higher Education Authority] are good people, but I do not see any evidence they understand third-level education. The way they have administered the Employment Control Framework does not show any serious sophistication about what is needed.”
Begley believes the government has been short-sighted and lacks a clear long-term strategy for higher education. “We all understand the need for budget cuts, but if you are just managing on a day-to-day basis, that does not give you a chance to think about long-term goals.”
Without investing in a careful, focused way in higher education, the government will not succeed in building a knowledge economy, he said. “What is Ireland going to do to stand out from the rest? There are possibilities. The subsidiaries of multinationals are always looking for educated, talented, skilled workforces, and if Ireland can provide them, that would be fertile ground for us.”
Begley believes there is a particular lack of strategic thinking when it comes to investment in business schools, of which there are five in Dublin alone.
“At the undergraduate level, the business schools have a valuable role to serve, but I do not think Ireland can afford more than one graduate school of business. What happens now is everyone gets a little bit.
Advertisement
“Ours [the Smurfit School of Business] is the most advanced, but we do not have the capability with current investment levels to get to the top of our game. We need to figure it out in a way that doesn’t victimise other business schools, but if you begin to invest more resources in your top school, it will develop top-20, world-class capabilities.”
Funding needs to be even more narrowly channelled into certain key areas of expertise, he adds, giving finance as an example. “It’s a case of identifying exactly the strategic strengths of Irish universities and investing in those areas.”
He said this was critical if the current drive to recruit more overseas students to Ireland were to succeed.
“Countries like Australia, Canada, the UK, New Zealand and Singapore have invested heavily in promoting themselves as a higher education mecca. Ireland has to establish a reputation. Sometimes, it has to start with telling people where Ireland is. It is hard to sell a MSc in Ireland to someone if they do not even know if we teach in English.”
Meanwhile, Begley says UCD will continue to look to philanthropists for funds, but he argues that additional money should be invested in “intellectual capital” — lectureships, professorships, scholarships and research — rather than buildings. If he could do just one thing in Irish education, it would be to put an end to the Leaving Cert, he says. “I would love to see the Leaving Cert taken out in a field and blown up. It is completely dysfunctional. I can see how it would have worked in the past, avoiding the ‘who you know’ syndrome, but the way it has evolved does not develop thinking skills in students.”
Advertisement
He said the whole first-year curriculum for business students at UCD is aimed at breaking the Leaving Cert mentality.
“We have to teach them critical thinking, as opposed to telling them, ‘this is going to be on the exam’ and have them cough it up. I have been listening to and reading some of the analysis of this year’s Leaving Cert and every once in a while, students get indignant because they were asked a question for which they had not prepared.
“If you are studying algebra, the purpose of that education is to learn algebra, not learn how to pass a test.”
To underline his point, Begley says that the exams he sets are usually open-book. “In the real world, if you are asked to do something, you are not told to clear your desk and informed you can only do it based on your own knowledge. You get on the internet, look at some books, take a training course. You do not have to have it all in your head. You just have to know where to find it.”
Despite his concerns about the Irish education system overall, Begley says he has loved teaching at UCD and praises the students as keen and the staff as supportive.
Advertisement
He is moving back to America for family reasons and is taking up the position of head of business at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York, the oldest technological university in an English-speaking country.