Prospects for a Private, Indigenous and For-Profit University in Dublin

Abstract

The prospects for the expansion of private higher education (HE) in Ireland, culminating in the establishment of a for-profit university in the near future, do not seem to have attracted a great deal of scholarly interest. Instead, where academics mention the growth of private/for-profit educa- tion, the tendency is to concentrate on the providers of intensive additional or revision coaching, known colloquially as ‘grind schools’ (Smyth, 2009). Nor did major official or quasi-official reports concerning Irish HE in the first decade or so of the twenty-first century discuss the prospect of an indigenous, for-profit university being created in Ireland. Here, I have in mind reports produced by/for bodies, including the Department of Educa- tion and Science (latterly, and Skills; DES), the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the Royal Irish Academy (RIA), the state employment agency Foras Âiseanna Sathair (FAS, renamed Solas in 2011), the Conference of Heads of Irish Universities (CHIU, since 2005 the Irish Universities Association) and the Irish state’s main proxy in HE funding/governance, the Higher Education Authority (HEA). Admittedly, the various reporting authors/committees did not necessarily ‘have the brief to consider such a development other than in general terms (see Skilbeck, 2001; OECD, 2004; RIA, 2005; Behan et al, 2009 and especially Strategy Group for Higher Education, 2011), but, overall, there is a sense of this being a prospect that has not been taken very seriously.

A version of this piece appeared elsewhere (Limond, 2010) and I have frequently drawn on that earlier work in preparing this, revising comments and adding some additional references.