Students Union President on the Brady agenda

from the letters page of The Irish Times

Dear Madam,
As the President of UCD’s Students’ Union I read with interest your editorial of the 3^rd of November celebrating the 150^th anniversary of UCD's founding. I have to say I disagree with your assessment of Dr Hugh Brady’s vision for a new UCD.
I agree with you that in very many ways the life of University College Dublin mirrors the life of the modern Irish state. Presently in Ireland we see a struggle between people who see the state as having a minimal role in providing services to its citizens and those who want to see properly funded health, transport and education services. This struggle is alive and well in UCD.
Education is under the threat of a creeping form of privatisation. The Government, the Higher Education Authority, the OECD and Dr Hugh Brady have all joined together to push for a reliance on corporate funding. They base their vision for Irish universities on American colleges like Harvard and Yale, both of which charge tens of thousands of dollars per year.
Students and academics are fearful of the University that Dr Hugh Brady envisages. His vision of a university is one which takes Newman’s idea of a University where learning and knowledge are the ends in themselves, and twists it around to one where learning and knowledge are only worthwhile if you can offer something to the corporate world.
According to Dr Brady, this university is now to be one where research for private companies takes priority over everything else. His is a University where teaching and students take a back seat. Evidence of this lies in the fact that of the 7 new pathways to professorship that Dr Brady published recently, none have anything to do with an academics ability to teach or give interesting engaging lectures.
I was personally proud to be asked to join in the celebrations that UCD put on for the 150^th but found that events were sadly lacking for either the general staff or ordinary student population. This fact adds legitimacy to the fears of students that they, under the new vision of Dr Brady, are merely incidental to the running of a university.
This is why students and a lot of staff in UCD don’t support Dr Hugh Brady’s new vision for UCD and wish for a University more like the one Cardinal John Henry Newman envisaged where knowledge is an end in itself. We wish to see a University that is for the benefit of all the people of Ireland not a University that is solely for the benefit of the business community. As the Cardinal himself put it when speaking of what is good for a university.
“Pursuits, which issue in nothing, and still maintain their ground for ages, which are regarded as admirable, though they have not as yet proved themselves to be useful, must have their sufficient end in themselves, whatever it turn out to be” (Cardinal John Henry Newman)

Is mise le meas

Fergal Scully

Uachtarán, Aontas Na Mac Léinn