Royal Irish Academy suggests cross-border oversight body for Derry university

The RIA, is an academic body based in Dublin, that promotes study in the sciences, humanities and social sciences. It is Ireland's premier learned society and one of its leading cultural institutions. 

‘Finding common ground, building community: strengthening and stimulating tertiary regional collaboration in the north-west of the island of Ireland’ was published by the RIA this week.

The discussion paper, funded by the Irish government’s New Foundations scheme and the Shared Island Unit, expands on previous work by the RIA’s Higher Education Futures Taskforce and recommends action towards an “ambitious” cross-border university to alleviate “historic underinvestment” in the region.

Professor Gerry McKenna, senior vice-president of the Royal Irish Academy, Sinéad Riordan and Jennifer Kenneally authored the paper, which highlights ‘the historical lack of investment across both jurisdictions in the greater north-west of the island of Ireland’, as well as often discussed infrastructure deficits in transport, particularly road, rail and air.

Derry has 5,000 students after a decades-long campaign to expand the campus to 10,000 students.

"What has been made clear by this project is the immediate need for a coherent strategy for the north-west that is underpinned by the requisite levels of investment and oversight,” the discussion paper argues.”

Derry University Group, a campaign group fighting for major changes to the current university economy in the city, plan to convene this month to discuss the report’s recommendations. 

The group said of the report: “The focus, quite rightly, is on how best to develop an independent NWU. But the arguments as to why autonomy is essential, particularly the economic ones, are also outlined in full.”

The report states: “The distribution of HE provision in Northern Ireland, with over 80 percent of places being based in the capital city, Belfast, is in sharp contrast to that found in the other jurisdictions in these islands. Northern Ireland, unlike the other jurisdictions, has no independent oversight of HE or tertiary education provision.

"It is difficult to envisage a HE oversight body supporting the current geographically skewed distribution of HE places or concluding that such concentration would be in the interests of economic and cultural development or social cohesion.

"It has been argued, based on analyses of regional HE strategies across a range of countries, that a regional representative body helps to ensure the retention of a regional mission and reinforces diversity and resilience.”

The report goes on to make a strong call for a cross-border oversight body to oversee the distribution of university provision.

“The future development of the greater north-west requires effective cross-border planning of tertiary education with enhanced concurrent and coordinated funding from both jurisdictions.

"Although this could conceivably be achieved by expansion of the NWTEC with independent oversight, the development of a federal crossborder tertiary education institution merits serious consideration.

"A federal cross-border tertiary education institution would be made up of existing constituent institutions but with an overall governance structure involving coordinated oversight of planning across the region, promoting collaboration and eliminating wasteful and unnecessary duplication.

"In such a scenario, each jurisdiction would continue to be responsible for the funding of its colleges and campuses,” the paper concludes.

The authors fall short of exploring any potential models in detail pointing to “limited resources” to do so, recommending a feasibility study be commissioned by UK and Irish governments in conjunction with the NI assembly to ascertain how the project should look.