The new Qualifications Bill, and university autonomy
Passing almost unnoticed through the Oireachtas (2nd stage Seanad debate, 20 September), the new Qualifications and Quality Assurance Bill has the potential to make a radical alteration in the relationship between the universities and the central political administration. The overall aim – to replace the various existing quality assurance bodies with a single statutory body – seems uncontroversial, as does the desire to increase student representation at all levels of that process. The suggestion that this is a “simplification” of the law, when from the university point of view it replaces a single section of the Universities Act 1997 with an 80-section monstrosity, is perhaps just a rather bad joke.
But other issues are getting lost. The pervasive assumption is that, whatever the problem may be, the solution is more monitoring and control from central government. And the general appreciation of the position of universities was not noticeably high. One Senator, who may perhaps be commended for realising that the increased control provided for in the Bill has real-world consequences in a world of limited budgets, rather plaintively noted that:
costs may be incurred by universities in implementing revised quality assurance practices. Can the Minister provide assurances that if there are any additional costs, they will not result in higher student fees?
But answer came there none. Of course the more elaborate demands of the Bill will cost money to implement, and of course this money must either come from increased fee income or reduction in services provided by the universities. The Senator’s request was ignored, perhaps on the ground that requests that the Minister repeal the laws of arithmetic deserve no answer. Or, perhaps, because Senators believed that the revisions would identify wasteful practices which can be painlessly and lucratively reformed. But while no doubt there are areas where money is being wasted, it flies in the face of the evidence to believe that more elaborate laws, with a higher compliance cost, is the way to deal with them.
It will be obvious that while evidence-based approaches to university administration and reform are unavoidable and in a general sense good, debates such as this show how evidence is in practice used. For example, the fact that some Irish universities have fallen in the rankings is treated as evidence that greater supervision is required. (Really? What about the universities that rose in the rankings? And are the recent reductions in funding really nothing to do with it? What about the Employment Control Framework?) And the debate was also largely oblivious to earlier government interventions and their consequences – Senator Barrett reminded the Seanad of the recent restructuring debacle, and the absence of any appreciable evidence (either before or after) that it was anything other than an expensive failure. But hard facts are only referred to where they suit the conclusion favoured. His point was ignored.
Part of what is being lost is any sense that university autonomy has any kind of value, or is anything more than special pleading from a privileged group who have failed to come up to what is demanded of them. Only slight hints that universities not only deserve to be left alone, but require it if they are to do better, came from Senator Bacik, and, less equivocally, from Senator Barrett, who noted with concern the compulsory powers in the new Bill:
It is very much to be regretted that the Minister stated the universities must implement the authority’s directions following a review. We have always been in favour of autonomous universities. We accept and respect diversity and different views. Universities are not a branch of the Civil Service. The latter’s attempts to take them over in recent years, by rapidly increasing the amount of bureaucracy and devoting increasingly fewer funds to what goes on in the lecture hall, are a pity. I regret to see this continuing …
In the Minister’s summing-up, there is at least some concession to university concerns, but not very much. It is a sign of the times that he met Senators Bacik and Barrett’s complaints against the attitude of “Marlborough Street” (= the Department) and the HEA not with a denial, or even a hint that they had misunderstood the bureaucratic mindset, but rather by asserting “that is certainly not my intention”. If that is true, then clearly the Minister’s intentions are not the dominant force behind the Bill, which makes no reference to university autonomy, and is explicit that universities must not simply comply with “directions” from the new quality body but must file reports detailing that compliance (section 34). Where this leaves university responsibility for spending the funds allocated to them is unclear.
2nd stage Seanad debate, 20 September
Progress through the Oireachtas
Tags: quality assurance, Ruairí Quinn
It is quite amazing that this Bill passed almost unnoticed apart from your blog. To me from what I have read it seems to illustrate the compete inadequacy and failure of FETAC, for several years it has campaigned of the usefulness of these accredited certificates when in fact what they were doing was killing any kind of thinking outside a box. It is deplorable that the type of curricula that Fetac instilled on a generation.