Rose Conway-Walsh warns against marketisation of higher education
Rose Conway-Walsh challenged provisions in the higher education bill, arguing that the inclusion of 'value for money' language risks marketisation and undermines academic freedom. She also highlighted the bill's omission of trade unions and called for stronger staff and union representation on governing bodies.
Value for money and market logic
The speaker questioned the bill's emphasis on evidence of "value for money" without defined criteria, arguing that equating academic experience to market outcomes is ideological and risks sidelining the public-good nature of education. She emphasised that critical thinking and discovery research are hard to quantify and should not be reduced to simple market metrics.
Student representation and academic experience
Rose Conway-Walsh echoed concerns raised by the USI that access to education should remain a right for people at all stages of the academic journey, including undergraduate, postgraduate and international students. She highlighted the role of student representation, advocacy and engagement in securing a high-quality educational experience and warned of a loss of critical analysis under market logic.
Trade unions omitted from the bill
She noted that across the bill's 180 pages there is no explicit reference to trade unions, and that staff currently elected to governing authorities could see their input reduced. The bill's provisions that external membership should outnumber internal members, and that many externals will be ministerial appointees, raised concerns that government nominees could promote policy over staff or institutional needs.
Calls for union representation and engagement
Conway-Walsh said higher education unions operating under the ICTU umbrella, including SIPTU, UNITE and Borsa, have been working closely on sector issues and should be invited into the conversation. She and witnesses argued there should be a trade union representative on the HEA governing body and urged the committee to consider including union representation in the bill's provisions.
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Thank you Lasse, Cahirleach and thanks to Clare, Annette and Joan for the submissions. Now the first question I have is for the USI. So in your submission you said that you're gravely concerned about the inclusion of the value for money criteria and the risk it posed in pushing us further down the road of marketisation and commercialisation of the third level education. Now I very much share your concerns and we all want value for money but it's an ideological myth that a market logic produces the best outcomes. At the end of the day education is a public good or should be a public good and the type of public good is not always easy to measure. The bill talks about evidence of value for money without outlining the criteria and proving the value of critical thinking and discovery research. It's not as straightforward as it might appear on the basis. So could you expand on your concerns on this issue and are there concerns here about institutional independence and academic freedom? So maybe I'll just do that question first if I could maybe have an answer on that. The USI firmly believes that you know access to education and all throughout the academic journey point of entry success progression and also for students who have graduated continuing to the workforce that it should be access and accessible for everyone. So in terms of the language used around value for money it's concerning that it's equating the academic experience to one of the market and so naturally we would be concerned with the language around it and I suppose trying to ensure that the way we view education and the narrative that we tell ourselves that it's a right at the end of the day and that all people from all different walks of society have access to education. And so the concern comes with the language used around it and but certainly our most important interest is ensuring that students and postgraduate students, international students, undergraduate students get the most and most meaningful high quality educational experience possible and we believe that that can be achieved through student representation, student advocacy, engagement and participation and ensure that their success is the priority as well. Yeah thanks for that Claire I think it's enormously important because I think we're losing that particularly the ability to be able to critically analyse things and that's what's needed for the workforce today but also what's needed on your journey through education and life. I have a couple of questions so maybe I have a couple of questions so maybe I'll go on to the others. Now in the 180 pages of the bill there's no reference to trade unions and at a time when we've seen the rapid expansion of the precarious work in higher education sector it's alarming that there seems to me to be an attempt to sideline trade unions. What's the current role of trade unions in higher education governance and what would you like to see in the bill? Well I might come in there if that's okay Annette. Well currently staff are elected so these are the internal representatives and the staff are elected by their own peers onto governing authority and universities. So obviously there is a concern by reducing the number of internal participants on the governing authority that that will affect you know the input from the staff themselves. But not only that it will also create a mistrust of the governing authority because right through the bill there is in several heads talking about the external membership must be higher than internal membership and that a number of those external members will be ministerial appointments. So there's a sense well a very strong sense and I suppose a huge concern from our own members that they could see that the staff representation or staff voice will be reduced and that the ministerial nominees will I suppose promote government policy rather than staff concerns for the needs of the university. But just getting back to the question around trade union involvement and you know where it's quoted or not quoted in this new bill. It's not actually the trade union movement is not mentioned and that's really disappointing because as is correct the students union is mentioned there's a number of tables right through the document. It's not head 17 head 17 head 18 head 37 they're just a couple of examples and there might be a word like you know appointed by the minister or representative bodies of staff and researchers and education and higher education providers. This doesn't mention the trade union movement which you know is quite extraordinary and also when we look at the higher education authority and also the membership of that authority again we have a student representative which is quite correct but again there's no trade union representative on that body. So that is a huge concern not only to the trade union movement itself. Yeah I certainly share your concern Annette do you want to speak to that? Yeah I might I might add to that yeah first of all there's there's a larger group representing members in the higher education sector all under the ICTU umbrella so they include my colleagues from from from SIPTU and UNITE and Borsa so you know maybe there might be an opportunity at a later stage you know to invite ICTU and the relevant unions within the higher education sector because certainly in the last while we've been working you know very closely together as a higher education group. And not alone just on COVID-19 issues but also on funding and you may have got a report from ICTU about a year ago in terms of the funding of the sector so I can resend it again to members of the committee. But all of my fellow trade unionists representing higher education you know we are all at one that there should be a representative of the trade union movement on the governing body of the HEA and there isn't currently such representation and there's no mention of it within the provisions of these heads of bill. Ms Dolan apologies for interrupting but I'm afraid we've just come to the end of the six minutes so what I might do is if it's all right that you might put that answer together and perhaps send it to deputy um deputy Conway Walsh also just thank you very much just to note that ICTU I think declined to join the meeting today. um
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