Now is both the best and worst time to embark on a billion-euro expansion of a university campus. That our higher education funding crisis will be solved before the Trinity Technology and Enterprise Campus (TTEC) is fully built is perhaps too much to hope for, while tax policies in both the US and post-Brexit UK might, in the years to come, restrain the clutch of companies that have been attracted to Ireland.
And yet the growth of TTEC, if successful, may also be vindication of a provost’s dogged refusal to be constrained by the realities of the domestic issues facing Ireland. Provost Patrick Prendergast told staff late last year that the universities that will “survive and emerge strengthened are those that act with foresight, pragmatism and ambition” – it seems we must take him at his word.
This isn’t to say that TTEC might not end up as a cautionary tale. The project rests not only on an assumption that the startup boom Ireland has experienced will continue, but that the government will provide the necessary funding. And while Dr Diarmuid O’Brien, Trinity’s Chief Enterprise and Innovation Officer, gives off an air of confidence that some form of state funding will be found, there will no doubt be some nerves if, in two years time, there is still no answer from a government unready to take such large financial risks – no matter how valuable such a campus might be to Dublin’s fortunes.
But Trinity is also, in some ways, farming the very fruits that will grow and sustain TTEC. The multitude of campus companies, whether from staff or graduates, offer a long list of contacts and potential partners that O’Brien and his staff will no doubt be meeting with over the coming years. In this sense, TTEC will not only house an entrepreneurial spirit that’s been brewing in Trinity since Prendergast took over, but its very foundation might be the companies Trinity itself helped foster.
The growth of a new campus is exciting. It offers possibilities for staff and students. But, in a world of change, perhaps no one is ready to be too optimistic until Prendergast is digging the first sod on the TTEC site.
