Politicisation and the abandonment of institutional neutrality have become central critiques in the Right’s criticism of the modern University. Ireland has not been immune to these problems: from Trinity College taking an official position on the Gaza conflict in 2024, to the tying of academic research funding to ideology-driven programmes such as Athena Swan, to the proliferation of DEI initiatives and campus cancellations—most recently the blocking of Breaking Point’s Is Ireland Safe? event at UCD, ironically, on the grounds of “safety concerns.”
Opposing this is important in order to preserve the institutional purpose of the University – not itself a critic, but the host of critics. Yet it neglects the full scope of the problem in the modern university: corporatisation. The transformation of the University into a profit-driven enterprise, prioritising revenue streams and market-oriented metrics over academic excellence, free inquiry and intellectual freedom.
At one level, the corporatisation and politicisation of the University are invariably linked. For instance, in May 2024, activists at TCD succeeded in pressuring the university to take an institutional position on the Gaza war, where activists at UCD had failed. Their success lay in their capacity to directly target Trinity’s revenue stream by blockading the Book of Kells exhibit, which generates an estimated €20 million annually for the college. Although the university initially appeared ready to confront the activists – threatening expulsions and a €214,000 fine for TCDSU, explicitly tying this fine to the lost Book of Kells revenue – it ultimately backed down, prioritizing its corporate interests over its institutional integrity.
On another level, the corporatisation of the University undermines its very purpose by diverting attention away from academic pursuits in the arts and humanities, and redirecting it towards fields and research valued primarily for their perceived market-driven utility.
A 2023 paper by Jennie Stephens and Dr. Conchúr Ó Maonaigh underscored this concern, warning that “it can lead to an erosion of support for academic endeavours that may not be perceived as having commercial value.” Likewise, a 2022 paper identified a €307 million annual funding gap in higher education, following a sharp decline in State investment, with core public funding falling by 50 percent after the crash.
Universities bridged this funding gap via corporate donations. For instance, in 2018, industry invested €39.6 million in Health, Engineering, Technology, and Natural Sciences, while humanities received only €400,000. By 2020, humanities funding had further declined to €200,000. A dynamic that inevitably redirects the University’s attention away from the humanities and towards the better-paying STEM fields, in search of further investment.
Bizarrely, the Technological Universities Act of 2018 and the Higher Education Authority Act of 2022 entrenched this problem by introducing a ‘coregulation’ model and advancing the government’s Impact 2030 strategy, embedding performance-based metrics—such as research income per academic staff member and the number of commercial spin-outs—into institutional evaluations. This created a funding dynamic that diverts resources away from the arts and humanities and toward profit-driven STEM disciplines.
In contrast to the Right’s focus on the politicisation of Irish universities, left-wing critique has centred more on corporatisation- particularly raising concerns about funding from companies like Ryanair, whose high carbon emissions make their support for climate research allegedly an attempt at “greenwashing.” Left-wing critics also warn of the agenda-setting power such funding entails, with fears that it could prioritise research into carbon capture technologies over decarbonisation.
However, carbon technology as a whole is an exciting field of research, and is an example that shows corporate funding of universities at its best, as well as the importance of STEM within the University. The problem isn’t corporate funding, in and of itself, but the failure of Universities to integrate this revenue stream into its institutional model – corporate funding should better enable the university to complete its mission, rather than its acquisition becoming the function of the university itself.
Decentralising this utilitarian impulse is as essential to revitalising the Irish University as de-politicising its institutions. As Scruton wrote; “Within college walls the adolescent is granted a vision of the ends of life; and he takes from the university the one thing that the world does not provide, which is a conception of intrinsic value. And that is why the university is so important in an age of commerce and industry, when the utilitarian temptation besieges us on every side, and when we are in danger of making every purpose a material one—in other words, as Newman saw it, in danger of allowing the means to swallow the ends.”
Dean Céitinn