Comments made by the vice-chancellor of Queen’s University Belfast, Patrick Johnston, earlier this week sparked passionate backlash from academics and those interested in the preservation of a university’s mission of academia. Speaking about the effects that increased cuts in funding from the state, including a cut of £8 million from Stormont last year, had been having on the university in an interview with the Belfast Telegraph, Johnston stated that “society does not need a 21-year-old that’s a sixth century historian”, a statement for which he later apologised to the university’s history department.
Johnston’s comment only serves to deepen the fears that many have around the future of higher education, as third-level institutes are coming under increasing financial pressure and the accompanying pressure to find new sources of funding beyond the state. The worry that universities are beginning to act like businesses, with courses that do not align themselves with corporate interests or for which it is difficult to secure funding being deprioritised, is becoming increasingly prominent. So too is concern that curricula and research output are being altered to benefit external corporations. Indeed, Johnston said that the university no longer offers single honours degrees in sociology and anthropology and instead intends “to strengthen those subjects by allowing them to partner with other subject areas which actually make their relevance more connected”.
The financial and social pressures facing universities are immense, and the issue is simply not a priority for either the government or the general public. This is why Johnston’s comments have been met with such disdain by his own university: external cynicism about the future of third-level education have permeated the thinking of a university leader, who is precisely the person who should be upholding and fighting for the value of academia when so few others are.
With the funding situation in Ireland also extremely tenuous, and with decisions about the future higher education funding still further delayed, it is up to our university staff, students and leaders to convince the government and the public of the value of this sort of education, and not just that which benefits corporations in a more obvious way.
