‘Igniting Potential’ – New Zealand approach to innovative policies and strategies in research development - Di McCarthy

On Monday 7 March, Dr Di McCarthy, Chief Executive of the Royal Society of New Zealand delivered a lecture at the Royal Irish Academy entitled R&D – The New Zealand Way: Funding and Prioritisation in Higher Education. This event was jointly hosted by the Royal Irish Academy and the Higher Education Research Centre, Dublin City University. It was chaired by Professor Nicolas Canny, President of the Royal Irish Academy, and introduced by Professor Maria Slowey, Director of Higher Education Research and Development at DCU and coordinator of the seminar series Higher education in challenging times: questioning the unquestioned.

Professor Nicholas Canny, President of the Royal Irish Academy introducing Dr Di McCarthy, Chief Executive of the Royal Society of New Zealand and Professor Maria Slowey, Director Higher Education Research and Development, DCU

Dr McCarthy, previously Professor and Pro-Vice Chancellor (Equality) at Auckland University, commenced with reference to the long and proud history of tertiary education in New Zealand. Since the establishment of the first university just about 140 years ago, the universities became key contributors to New Zealand’s social and economic well-being. But numerous changes are taking place in this small island state, including: the search for more business investment, the need for available research funding to be used more effectively, support for fundamental research, increasing international connections and settling new priorities for higher education. In the course of her lecture, Di McCarthy explained how the need for prioritisation and adaptation of innovative strategies and policies in regard to R&D in higher education was gradually triggered by a number of factors. She highlighted, in particular, low business investment in R&D, an overly complex system, poor connection across science and innovation, gaps in important infrastructure and the loss of talented researchers.

More specifically, Di McCarthy described new systems of organising research funding, which maintained an important role for the Royal Society of NZ as a channel for funding basic research across all disciplines.

The event attracted wide interest with up to 70 representatives from civil society, researchers and those engaged in policy and practice in higher education. The discussion drew parallels and differences with Ireland and centred around the questions “How might greater collaboration or merger  of institutions change things? What are the best mechanisms of allocating funding to maintain a competitive element yet reduce bureaucracy? What does success look like in terms of economic measurement of outputs of research? How to ensure that research investment is not distorted by the search for narrow, short-term indicators” and many more.

Concluding the event, Di McCarthy stressed that the ideas and creativity are at the core of knowledge creation, cultural innovation, social well-being and economic and technological development. The expectations of research are high and there is a need for encouraging more integration into interdisciplinary research locally and worldwide.

New ways for universities to engage with regions and communities - Hans G. Schuetze

On 4 March, Hans G. Schuetze, Emeritus Professor, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada delivered a talk entitled Regional Engagement and Service Mission of Universities: North American Perspectives. This was the third of a lecture series co-sponsored by the Higher Education Research Centre (HERC) DCU, the Higher Education Authority (HEA) and the Dublin Region Higher Education Alliance (DRHEA) The event was chaired by Professor Maria Slowey, Director of Higher Education Research and Development, DCU, with participants and discussants Professor Ronnie Munck, Head of Civic and Global Engagement, DCU, and Dr. Elaine Ward, Higher Education Policy Research Unit, DIT. 

Professor Maria Slowey,  Professor Ronnie Munck,
Dr. Elaine Ward, Professor Hans G. Schuetze

In the changing environment of international competitiveness, economic globalisation, trends towards commercialisation of university research and teaching, there is also an increased demand to demonstrate ‘relevance’ and ‘impact’ of universities on local and regional communities. While the pursuit of knowledge transcends national boundaries, historically, the identity – and mission- of universities is strongly associated with the town, city or region in which they are located.  Universities are therefore both embedded in regional environments, yet also international in relation to the pursuit of knowledge. Sitting alongside the classic two missions of teaching and research, internationally there are new attempts to recognise the ‘third mission’ of higher education variously entitled civic, community or regional engagement: a theme highlighted in the recent Hunt report on Higher Education.

Professor Hans G. Schuetze

Throughout the course of the seminar, however, the speaker demonstrated that community engagement can be undermined by the “reinforcement of research function by international rankings and ‘academic drift’ by new universities and non-university institutions”.  He continued that it is essential that communities of researchers and policy makers continue to pose questions such as: “How do we measure community engagement? Should all universities have to prove relevance and impact, including some degree of community engagement? Should community engagement be made mandatory and carry equal importance and prestige as research and teaching?”

    

Speaking at the event Professor Schuetze added: “Because of the wide variety of forms of engagement and the different objectives of evaluation, outcomes of community engagement and community-based learning can rarely be precisely defined, assessed, quantified and compared”.  A major part of the challenge lies in finding ways of promoting genuine dialogue and interaction between institutions of higher education and the wider community in order to bridge the gap: “communities have problems, universities have departments”.  

Professor Hans G. Schuetze, is a Fellow and former Director, Centre for Policy Studies in Higher Education and Training, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, and also a Senior Honorary Research Fellow, University of Glasgow, Scotland, UK. 

Questioning the role and future of higher education - Simon Marginson

On February 21^st, the Higher Education Research Centre (HERC) at DCU hosted Professor Simon Marginson’s talk entitled “Does higher education create public good(s) and should it be publicly funded?” This was the second event in the seminar series Higher education in challenging times: questioning the unquestioned and saw the series, coordinated by Professor Maria Slowey at HERC, really get into its stride.

The UK government recently elected to withdraw public investment from most higher education teaching- including the whole of the humanities and social sciences- undermining longstanding assumptions about the value of higher education to the individual and to society. Politicians and educators in Ireland and elsewhere must surely watch with interest the consequences of this decision. Professor Marginson put the following series of questions to his audience of higher education policy makers, practitioners and researchers:

“But what are the costs of moving to a fully marketized system of higher education? Is higher education nothing more than a producer of status and earnings benefits for individuals? Should public funding for higher education be withdrawn in tough times? Will that change the nature of higher education? Is the notion of public good(s) and common global benefits empty rhetoric generated by self-serving institutions? Or are there fundamental social qualities at stake in this debate? What are the public good(s) created by higher education, can they be measured, can they be expanded and enhanced, and what is the relationship between public goods and private goods?”

It is vital that these issues are fully and publicly debated in an Ireland in economic crisis.

Responding to Professor Marginson’s commanding and historically contextualised talk were expert panellists Professor Patrick Clancy, Emeritus Professor of Sociology at UCD, Professor Ellen Hazelkorn, Director of Research and Enterprise at DIT, and Professor Shinichi Yamamoto, Director of the Research Institute for Higher Education, Hiroshima University, Japan. Their contributions were followed by an open Q&A session which gave rise to an engaged debate between panel and audience. 

Professor Brian MacCraith, President, Dublin City University
Professor Patrick Clancy, University College Dublin
Professor Maria Slowey, Dublin City University
Professor Simon Marginson, Melbourne University
Professor Ellen Hazelkorn, Dublin Institute of Technology
Professor Shinichi Yamamoto, Hiroshima University

Professor Marginson is a frequent public and media commentator on higher education and an advisor to the OECD and the governments of Ireland, Australia and several countries in the Asia-Pacific region. He is based at the Centre for the Study of Higher Education, University of Melbourne, Australia.