Opinion

Cross-border action needed

In 2009-10 there was only one northern student enrolled at Dublin City University, which is two hours by road from Belfast.

This statistic reflects a pattern which indicates that despite the recent growth in north-south economic and political cooperation, there has been little progress in overcoming this island's entrenched division in third-level education.

Without the cross-border growth of learning and research it will be difficult for governments, business and industry to lay a foundation of science, technology and enterprise to underpin economic growth in both Irish states.

While knowledge can flow without the movement of people, the magnitude of student segregation at university level requires a degree of intervention by both Belfast and Dublin.

One per cent of the south's university students come from the north. Southern students take up just over 4 per cent of northern university places. Studying in Britain appears more attractive than studying in the other part of Ireland.

This is surprising in view of the common language and shared university culture on both sides of the border. While surprise is understandable, it is no substitute for explanation and action.

The explanation lies in past policy and present practice. The two reports which shaped higher education in Ireland failed to look across the border.

The Lockwood Report (1965) located the north's second university in Coleraine, rather than the border city of Derry, which already had Magee College historically linked with Trinity College, Dublin.

The Irish government's Commission on Higher Education (1967) was similarly blinkered. Even the south's more recent Hunt Report (2011) on a new national strategy for higher education showed little awareness of the world north of Dundalk.

Research suggests that cross-border abstinence is largely based on ignorance. Students and careers teachers are unfamiliar with the other state's university admissions system.

Most students here do not realise that the south's RTCs are high-quality technical universities which have no northern equivalent. The decision by southern universities to rate the Leaving Certificate above A Levels adds to the knowledge gap.

Harmonising A Levels and the Leaving Certificate would present significant curricular challenges in one or both states. But that challenge is balanced by a demographic opportunity which predicts a decline in the number of northern 18-year-olds, with no equivalent decline in the south.

It would be too simple to suggest that a southern surplus of students might occupy available northern university places but until both governments at least examine the current divisions in tertiary education, Irish universities will be unable to identify any such opportunities.

The two governments must act with urgency. In Irish higher education, ignorance is no longer an option.