Jack Leahy | News editor
Five years on from the onset of the crisis of public finances, the funding of higher education remains a matter of heated debate in Ireland. As yet there is no political consensus about the scale, scope and delivery of public investment. At a time of austerity, governments face difficult choices about investment priorities and questions are sometimes raised about the merits of educating more graduates.
The new college commercial strategy seeks to capitalise on the Book of Kells and tourist attractions offered by the city-centre campus. Photo: TCD Alumni office
The budgetary threat to the quality of higher education institutions in Ireland is high while more and more savings need to be found. But from where? According to developments in Trinity’s internal organisation over the last number of years, the answer lies in a decreased reliance on state funding and dedicated investment in sourcing external funding through untapped revenue streams. This strategy is fast become an integral part of College’s vision.
The steady decrease in the state grant offered to universities in Ireland has seen institutions mirror their American and British counterparts in persuading former students to open up their wallets as the number of alumni making donations to higher education institutions continues to rise. Moreover, in the last number of years Trinity College has focused its appeal to the international market for the higher, non-state-subsidised fees paid by students from outside of the European Union.
Alumni appeals have long since been a core facet of a university’s efforts to increase its capitation through non-state sourcing; Boston-based Harvard University receives over $2bn per annum in alumni funding, though its comprehensive financial assistance programme, regarded among the best in the world, is a significant beneficiary of this revenue.
In Trinity, students have been emloyed by the Alumni office for the last number of years in a quasi-call-centre environment whereby cold-call appeals for funding are made to alumni. Alumni are offered the opportunity to contribute to ‘Priority Projects’, namely developments in the Biomedical Sciences Institute, the School of Business, the Creative Arts, the School of Engineering, Trinty College Library Dublin, Neuro-Enhancement for Independent Lives (NEIL), National Institute for Intellectual Disability, the Science Gallery, the Trinity Access Programme, and the TILDA study on ageing.
Potential contributors may also support the College’s ‘Legacies’ projects, and the website for such a project exhorts visitors to ‘remember the power of a legacy to Trinity’ and includes contact details for those who wish to fund teaching, access, or the previously mentioned projects, as part of an individual’s will. The necessarily strong relationship that College has fostered with its former students is reflected by the fact that a wide range of societies benefit from alumni grants to make purchases for which the Central Societies Committee has not offered funding in the society’s grant; in 2012 TrinityTV, a relatively new society with almost no former members working professionally, received over €2,000 towards the purchase of a new camera and at the March AGM became the first Trinity society to enshrine the maintenance of good relations with the alumni office in its constitution.
Trinity’s increased focus on external revenues is beginning to bear fruit; the total grant received from alumni in recent years has not seen much dramatic change, but the funds received are crucial to the operations of the university against a backdrop of increasing sector pressure not distinct from direct budgetary cuts. The increased investment in external revenue sourcing is a product of need rather than greed, and for an institution of Trinity’s prestige and unique non-monetary resources, the task would appear to be significantly easier than that facing Ireland’s other universities and institutions of technology.
The ‘Trinity brand’ is one of the major tools available to the office of the Vice-Provost for Global Relations, established by Provost Patrick Prendergast upon his assumption of Provostial duties in August 2011. Professor Jane Ohlmeyer – who this writer once witnessed warn a meeting of the department of History that alumni funding might soon be needed to provide the ‘bread and butter’ of third-level education – was appointed to the role having finished second to Prendergast in the Provostial election.
The end of the 2010/11 academic year, during which this election was held, brought the announcement that College was planning to increase its quota for non-EU students from 9% to 15% of the overall student population, a definite precursor to the emphasis that Professor Ohlmeyer would place on international admissions and the lucrative cash-cow that they can represent.
The most obvious manifestation of this development in College funding strategy was announced in September when Eamonn Gilmore launched Trinity’s Global Relations Strategy, as part of which the College would offer a number of postgraduate and undergraduate scholarships to residents of specifically-chosen non-EU countries. The largest number of scholarships will be offered to students in Brazil and India, a straightforward reflection of rising GDP in the BRIC nations and the potential recognised by College to attract students from these countries.
The project has a large budget numbering tens of millions and boasts sixteen full-time staff, most of whom are ‘Regional Officers’ with responsibility for developing relationships with schools, universities, and other organisations in their region of responsibility. The VP GR was a key stakeholder in negotiations that led to the announcement that the University of Dublin Trinity College would confer, design, and teach degrees in Physiotherapy and Occupation Therapy in a strategic partnership with the Singapore Institute of Technology. The project ran into controversy in late 2012 when The University Times learned that the Professor Ohlmeyer had promised accommodation to prospective international students independent of College’s authorities on accommodation and despite an increasingly difficult rental environment for Irish students.
Finally, elements of College’s proposed new commercialisation strategy were revealed in March after the publication of the minutes of a meeting of University Council at which the plan was outlined. Proposals include a greater focus on the development of a ‘Trinity brand’, expansion of the exhibited pages of the Book of Kells, and a development of sporting facilities in Santry.
The political message to College is clear: increasingly less money is available. Sector professionals have begun to suggest that the government ought to seek auditable evidence that individual institutions are taking action to improve efficiency, effectiveness, and output at all levels. And the sector needs to start thinking about savings in terms of investments that enhance the student experience, help build new laboratories and recruit new professors. Until such a point where that message of incentive-based core funding is communicated clearly by someone acting on behalf of the executive government, College will have to continue to find funds elsewhere.
