A talent-driven economy without appropriate investment in universities is on a path to decline.

International competition for FDI has intensified.

A talent-driven economy without appropriate investment in universities is on a path to decline.

Even for those who are not currently living by the academic calendar, September brings memories of sharpened pencils and new books, as the school year starts once again.

For us in University College Dublin, the first week of September brought the turning of the cycle into sharp focus, with conferring ceremonies happening alongside the orientation process for our new students.  It is very moving, as a university president, to speak at a welcome ceremony for our new students, most of them just out of school and looking simultaneously apprehensive and excited, and then a couple of hours later to look out over the same hall filled with proud, confident graduates and their guests.

Alongside the student welcomes and graduate celebrations, research and innovation activity was continuing on our campus.  This year will be a record for research grant acquisition in UCD, blasting through the record set last year, and in March NovaUCD was named as one of Europe’s leading start-up hubs by the Financial Times.

Seeing the immense resource of talent and skills embodied in our graduates; hearing the stories of success from our research and innovation community – there is great reason for pride in our higher education institutions and what they continue to deliver for Ireland.  But this is tempered with some real concern.

Ireland’s universities are significantly underfunded – that is the view not just of a university president but of Government.  The Government’s Funding the Future report, launched in May 2022, confirmed the funding gap at €307M per annum, and committed to closing it over a number of years.  This funding was, the government said, separate from the funding that would be required to cater for demographic change and national pay awards.

The two national budgets since then have contributed €100M per annum to closing the €307M gap but, crucially, national pay awards have eroded €92M of that sum and cost inflation much of the remainder.  In other words, despite the very welcome commitments in Funding the Future, we have made essentially no net progress in reaching its aims. 

There is a similar picture in relation to the funding of research nationally, which lags well behind our international competitors. Government expenditure on research and development as a percentage of GDP is now just 0.2%, less than one-third of the 0.7% EU average and half of where it was a decade ago. Tracking this expenditure versus GNP or GNI* shows a similar picture of decline.

Our research infrastructure was transformed in the early years of the century through the Programme for Research in Third Level Institutions, and this enabled much of our subsequent success.  However, the last round of investment under that programme was launched in 2010. An investigation by the Irish Universities Association has shown that a third of the equipment in Irish universities is older than the original iPhone, and more than half is over a decade old.  This limits our ability to compete at the leading edge in domains of research that rely on this equipment, to build in the areas of most current relevance to industry, to attract the best researchers and to support them to succeed.

That our higher education and research sector is performing as well as it is despite this acknowledged underfunding is a credit to the commitment and hard work of those within the sector.  However, gaps are increasingly appearing in our ability to deliver to a level that matches our ambitions.  We are relying too strongly on the infrastructure and the playbook of years past. This does not allow us to excel at the leading edge and expand into new areas of opportunity. Continued inaction puts at risk a major strategic asset at a time when Ireland will need it most.

Ireland’s universities can expand our provision of advanced digital skills and all the other skills needs that will allow our graduates to flourish.  We can grow lifelong learning, whose level nationally is currently well behind that of our competitors.  We can deliver research solutions in the areas of greatest need for the country and the world.  We can do all of these, but not at current funding levels.  We need our faculty numbers, equipment base and support for researchers to match those in competitor countries, rather than lagging behind as at present.

This is particularly important at this time of disruption and challenge.

In countries around the world there is a new and sharpened focus on industrial competitiveness. Mario Draghi’s recent report on European competitiveness described the central role of universities in ‘early-stage innovation, generating breakthrough research and producing new skills profiles for the workforce’.

International competition for foreign direct investment has intensified. Many countries are actively seeking to replicate Ireland’s success in attracting FDI, often linking this to significant investment in their universities. 

All of the high-growth clusters in the Irish economy – medtech, ICT, agri-food, biopharma, renewable energy – are underpinned by the supply of high-skills talent and cutting-edge innovation, and our universities are pivotal partners in that model of success.

The Irish success story to date in delivering knowledge, innovations, talent and skills to drive economic and social development has been remarkable and will not easily be replicated, but that is not to say that it is resistant to challenge or to decline. To be a knowledge-based, talent-driven economy without appropriate investment in our universities is a path to that decline. The good news is that the National Training Fund, now heading for a €2 billion surplus, provides an ideal mechanism for this national investment.

As President Biden has said, “Don't tell me what you value, show me your budget, and I'll tell you what you value.”.

Providing a sustainable funding base is not just about funding our institutions – it is about, in the words of the Government’s 2022 report, funding our future.

• Professor Orla Feely, President, University College Dublin