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Working together will help our students

Date: 01 Feb 2012

Author:  Professor Ciarán ÓhÓgartaigh

Published: Irish Independent, February 1st 2012

 

Finance Minister Michael Noonan’s comments on emigration being a ‘lifestyle choice’ for some attracted attention.

It reminded me of a graduate I recently met.  His business card had his name – let’s call him Jack – his company, his number and email address.

However, it had no mailing address, only ‘Beijing, Dublin, New York’.  This indication of location was simple enough but signalled an aspect of life that is becoming increasingly typical. 

Jack represents a new generation, a citizen of a world where borders and geography don’t matter so much.  Whether Jack stays in Ireland or not, he doesn’t compete with graduates from other Irish business schools.  He competes with graduates of the best business schools in the world.

Our graduates must compete with the best internationally and therefore they must learn with the best internationally.

This means that business schools in Ireland don’t necessarily compete with other business schools in Ireland.  We compete with other business schools internationally.  We do so not only, or not even, to attract the revenue streams associated with international students but to create the learning environment that out students deserve.

For business schools, as for businesses, competing internationally means making choices.

We recently undertook a review of some of the characteristics of other business schools whose programmes, like ours are ranked in the top 100 internationally.

Although we are a big business school by Irish standards, the average of our peer schools is nearly twice our size.

Economics of scale mean that you can pool resources and achieve more with less.  Larger schools can also build critical mass in academic disciplines and offer a wider range of support services to students.  One big, graduate-business school would also increase profile and compete for Ireland more effectively, competing together rather than between ourselves.

As leaders in business education, our door is open to discussions that would allow Ireland to further build such scale in business education.

It makes little sense for our MBA programmes to compete with each other and duplicate resources, rather than competing together to further enhance the opportunities for our students.  Education policy in Ireland needs to invest in and back proven winners in order for us to compete internationally.

While the HEA and the Hunt Report seek to address this question at a policy level, resource – allocation models that spread fewer resources ever more thinly across third level institutions do not reward ambition or excellence.

This is not about us.  This is about our students.  Whether they stay in Ireland or leave our shores – either by necessity or choice – they deserve the best education we can give them.

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