Two weeks out from the new year, and still there is no sign of a decision on the Cassells report, despite Minister for Higher Education Simon Harris promising a decision would be made by the end of the year.
Of course, the government has never kept its promises on the report – a decision has always been on the forever-receding horizon. But still, it felt like this time, Harris might pull through.
Aside from more foot-dragging on funding higher education properly, the minister has disappointed throughout the rest of the year too. The promise of a seat at the ministerial table has proven ill-fated: the higher education sector is nominally getting more attention, but nothing of substance is changing.
The pandemic has changed everything, we are constantly told, and it does seem that people have different expectations of the government – the era of big government is back. Brexit should make Ireland the centre of English-speaking higher education in the EU.
Ireland prizes its knowledge economy, but not the sector without which it could not exist. This time of massive flux was as good a time as any to transform how we view higher education in this country. Excuses about the coronavirus restricting government coffers are bogus: the government has been flinging money at people since March 2020. Ireland made secondary education free in the 1960s, when we were hardly flush with cash. No other European country struggles with fees in the same way Ireland does.
A year and a half into his term, Harris has delivered a heap of broken promises, plans and press releases, along with two underwhelming budgets betraying a breath-taking lack of ambition.
Here is the Christmas wish list of colleges heading into the new year: lower the scandalously high accommodation prices, stop the rise in student numbers with no proper funding plan, invest meaningfully in the sector and make the SUSI grant scheme fit for purpose.
It has been a disappointing year in higher education. Universities, waiting for a decision on funding, have been left with coal in their stockings – again. Harris probably has at most a year left in his brief. Let’s hope he finds the kind of energy for higher education that he seems to reserve for doing interviews like he’s still the Minister for Health.
Articles from the Editorial Board will resume on January 9th, 2022.
