Victorian Pipeline located at Ringsend, Dublin

For the past 10 years, Maurice Boland, head of the College of Life Sciences at University College Dublin, has watched in dismay as government funding to higher education has gradually been whittled away. While money for research has been pouring from government coffers in unprecedented amounts, the country's "third-level" educational centers - seven universities and 14 institutes of technology - have been starved of funds for bread-and-butter undergraduate education, Boland says.

"In terms of what has happened here over the last 10 years, there have been significant cutbacks in the budgets ... approaching 30% in real terms," he says. "While we went through the Celtic Tiger, the money was not put into third-level. That is a very serious problem."

Boland is far from alone in his concerns. There is a growing sense of frustration among academics who argue that government plans to increase student places, and double PhD numbers by 2013, are not being met with enough investment. "We are finding it difficult to get through to the ministers and the cabinet that we are underfunded," he says.

The breakdown in communication with the government is now seemingly so severe that the leaders of the two largest Dublin universities joined forces. Hugh Brady, president of University College Dublin, and John Hegarty, provost of Trinity College Dublin, together wrote a letter to the Irish Times in March, publicly appealing for more funding.

"In Ireland there is no shortage of rhetoric about the knowledge society and our aspiration to be 'world class,'" their letter reads. "The reality, unfortunately, falls well short of the rhetoric. By most indicators our universities are significantly constrained by comparison with leading international institutions."

Fueling a Knowledge Economy

Over at the Institute of Technology, Tallaght, about 10 kilometers southwest of Dublin, there are similar strains. "We are certainly seeing it year on year," says Ken Carroll, head of the Department of Applied Science. "The annual budgets for the colleges have not been increasing in line with inflation, for example. When pay increases under agreements with government are factored in, as well as inflation, real budgets are falling, and the problem is getting steadily worse."

Of course, a crisis in higher education is not just a problem for academics. It also threatens the Irish government's oft-stated ambition of building a knowledge-based economy. "It is vitally important that undergraduate education is not forgotten," says Bernard Mahon, dean of Science at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth, one of four universities located in the greater Dublin area. "For the innovation economy to be achieved we will need to maintain the pipeline of future scientists and engineers."

That pipeline also seems to be springing leaks at the postgraduate level, as the best Irish students are increasingly being lost to US and UK colleges with better facilities, says Boland. "I was in Houston at Rice University and at Baylor College, and I met several Irish students. Many of them were postgrads that were going out there because of the research facilities [available] there. The same is happening with Oxford and Cambridge. They are attracting our students, they are better funded. Their staff-student ratios are much better than anything that we would have here."

Not Enough

The Higher Education Authority, which funds and coordinates Ireland's higher education system, acknowledges that day-to-day budgets for colleges are under strain and that greater resources will be required to meet government targets for increasing student numbers and capacity. "It is certainly an issue," says Malcolm Byrne, head of communications, "and if we are going to continue to expand the higher education system, while at the same time ensuring quality, that will require additional resources."

Tom Boland, the CEO of the Higher Education Authority (HEA), says he was aware of the views of Brady and Hegarty. "It is important to note that the Irish universities are almost fully funded from public funds, including undergraduate fees, and there is inevitably a tension between what university leaders say is required to fund their institutions and what government is willing, and able, to provide given the competing demands," he wrote in an E-mail.

Boland says he thinks Brady and Hegarty are overstating the case in the interests of making a point. "Nevertheless, their comments are a useful contribution to a debate on the development of our higher education and research system. Higher education in Ireland is seen by the government and others as key to our economic and social development. For the HEA (and the university leaders and indeed, I believe, government) there is no option to be contemplated other than to maintain quality. Therefore, resources must follow." According to Byrne, HEA estimates that an extra annual investment between €450 and €500 million ($695 and $772 million US) will be required.

Boland, meanwhile, worries that the situation is likely to get worse in coming years; against the background of the global recession, indications are that budgets are "tightening up" all around. The likelihood is that third-level institutions will borrow to survive. "What they'll do (the universities) is they will go into deficits," he says, "and it's a question then of how do you make up that deficit."