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Universities occupy a unique position in democratic society. They preserve and extend knowledge, educate future generations and shape the intellectual life of a nation. Universities are the intellectual engines of a country. Their graduates become teachers, doctors, engineers, lawyers, journalists, civil servants and political leaders, giving universities an influence unmatched by almost any other public institution.
In the 2024/25 academic year, Ireland’s publicly funded higher education institutions enrolled almost 280,000 students and received more than €1.7 billion in State funding, in addition to €193 million spending on research grants, capital investment and student support.
In return, taxpayers rightly expect universities to pursue truth, uphold high academic standards and contribute to the common good. Universities have traditionally been communities of scholars dedicated to open inquiry, reasoned debate and the testing of competing ideas—not simply providers of professional qualifications.
Today, however, that mission is being tested. Artificial intelligence has transformed access to knowledge, allowing students to obtain explanations, summaries and personalised tutoring within seconds. If information is no longer scarce, universities can no longer justify their existence simply by transmitting it. Their distinctive contribution must increasingly lie in cultivating judgement, intellectual curiosity and the ability to evaluate competing arguments.
Universities also face more immediate pressures. Since the pandemic, lecture attendance has declined markedly across much of higher education as students increasingly rely on recorded lectures, online resources and AI-assisted learning. A recent research using 8.9 million attendance records from a Dutch university documented a fall in average weekly attendance from 43.0% before the pandemic to 30.6% afterwards, suggesting that declining attendance is no longer anecdotal but measurable.
Irish researchers from Maynooth University have likewise concluded that attendance has not returned to pre-pandemic levels, although Irish universities generally do not publish systematic attendance data, making sector-wide comparisons difficult.
Concerns about grade inflation have also intensified. In Ireland, the proportion of graduates awarded First Class Honours degrees rose from approximately 16% in 2019 to 23.5% in 2021—an increase of almost 47% in just two years. Similar trends have been observed across Britain, Australia and North America. While higher grades do not necessarily indicate declining standards, they have fuelled growing questions about academic rigour, student engagement, and the long-term value of a university degree.
Together, these developments raise a broader question. If students are attending fewer classes while achieving higher grades, universities should be able to explain why and demonstrate that academic standards remain rigorous. In an age of online information and AI-assisted learning, maintaining public confidence will depend on showing that high grades continue to reflect genuine academic achievement rather than changing expectations or assessment practices.
Over the past three decades, a range of intellectual approaches centred on identity, power and social inequality has become increasingly prominent within many humanities and social science disciplines. Many of these approaches now fall under the umbrella of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI)—an institutional framework focused on promoting equality of opportunity, increasing the representation and inclusion of groups that have historically experienced disadvantage or discrimination, including women, ethnic minorities, people with disabilities, LGBTQ+ individuals and other protected or underrepresented groups.
Today, most universities have dedicated EDI offices or teams responsible for developing policies, delivering training, monitoring equality objectives, and embedding EDI principles across teaching, research and university governance.
In Ireland, these efforts are reinforced through the Athena Swan Charter, a national accreditation programme under which universities develop and implement action plans to advance gender equality in higher education. Since 2019, eligibility for significant research funding from agencies such as the Irish Research Council and Health Research Board has been linked to achieving at least a Bronze Athena Swan award, giving universities a strong financial incentive to obtain and maintain accreditation.
Frameworks such as feminism (the study of women’s status and gender inequality), intersectionality (the idea that overlapping social identities shape experiences of advantage and disadvantage), Critical Race Theory (a framework examining how racism may be embedded within legal and social institutions), queer theory (the critical study of sex, gender and sexuality), postcolonial and decolonial studies (the study of the lasting effects of colonialism and ways of challenging colonial systems of knowledge), anti-racism (approaches that seek to identify and oppose racism) and critical pedagogy (an educational philosophy that encourages students to examine power structures and social inequalities) have moved beyond specialist academic debates to influence teaching, research, institutional strategies and public engagement across much of the university sector.
This development is not unique to Ireland. Similar trends can be observed throughout universities in Britain, Australia, Canada and the United States. Irish universities have broadly followed this international evolution, establishing specialist programmes, research centres and institutional initiatives that examine questions of gender, identity, race, colonialism, inclusion and structural inequality.
Examples are easy to find across the Irish university sector. Many universities now offer dedicated programmes, research centres and institutional initiatives focusing on gender, race, identity, inclusion and social justice. Illustrative examples include:
Alongside these academic programmes, every Irish university maintains a dedicated Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) office or strategy, with institutional policies covering areas such as gender equality, race equality, inclusive teaching, unconscious bias, Athena Swan accreditation and equality action plans.
These examples illustrate that questions of identity and inequality are no longer confined to a small number of specialist programmes. Themes such as intersectionality, gender identity, decolonisation, anti-racism and social justice increasingly appear across teaching, research, staff development and institutional strategies.
Critics do not dispute the value of these fields but question whether the balance has shifted. Universities should expose students to competing and controversial ideas while ensuring that no single family of theories becomes the dominant lens through which complex social and political questions are interpreted. The goal of higher education is not to cultivate graduates capable of evaluating competing explanations with intellectual independence and critical judgement.
Critics argue that the growing influence of identity-based frameworks has sometimes been accompanied by a narrowing of intellectual diversity.
A substantial body of research from Britain, Europe and North America has found that academics in the humanities and social sciences are considerably more likely than the general population to identify with left-of-centre political views, while conservatives are comparatively underrepresented. A 2019 comparative study published in the European Sociological Review found that professors in the social sciences and humanities are significantly more left-leaning than those in other disciplines and discussed concerns about ideological homogeneity within these fields.
Similarly, a review of faculty surveys by Heterodox Academy found that studies conducted since 2012 consistently reported more liberal than conservative faculty, with liberal-to-conservative ratios ranging from 2:1 to 82:1, depending on the discipline and institution.
An interesting test is to look beyond academic surveys and examine university leadership. How many presidents of Irish universities, provosts or senior university leaders have publicly expressed views that could reasonably be described as conservative, classically liberal or sceptical of prevailing identity-based approaches? Conversely, how many have publicly endorsed Equality, Diversity and Inclusion initiatives, anti-racism strategies, sustainability agendas or social justice campaigns?
The issue is not that university leaders should adopt any particular political position. Rather, if universities value intellectual diversity, it is reasonable to ask whether that diversity is reflected in the range of viewpoints publicly represented by their own leadership.
Many of these intellectual frameworks also originated outside Ireland. Critical Race Theory, intersectionality and much contemporary identity politics emerged largely from the particular historical experience of the United States. Ireland’s own history has been markedly different.
Rather than being a settler-colonial society shaped by slavery and the displacement of indigenous peoples, Ireland spent over eight centuries under British rule as a colonised nation. While Ireland has its own history of injustice and inequality, American frameworks do not always map neatly onto the Irish experience. The question is therefore not whether universities should engage with international scholarship—they should—but whether theories developed elsewhere are being critically adapted to Irish circumstances or increasingly presented as the dominant framework through which Irish society is understood.
Universities should aim to cultivate graduates who are neither passive recipients of ideas nor political activists committed to a particular cause, but rather independent critical thinkers. A healthy university culture encourages curiosity, open debate and intellectual humility, recognising that knowledge advances through the rigorous testing of ideas rather than adherence to ideological commitments. In this sense, the goal of education is not activism but the development of thoughtful, well-informed citizens capable of contributing to society through reasoned analysis and independent judgment.
Questions about intellectual diversity naturally lead to questions about governance. In Irish universities, academic appointments are usually decided by expert selection panels. These panels have a great deal of freedom to decide who is the best candidate based on research, teaching and overall suitability. Their decisions are rarely overturned by university management or the courts, which generally only check that the correct procedures were followed rather than whether the panel made the right academic judgement. This independence protects universities from political interference, but it also means that selection panels have a major influence on the ideas and viewpoints represented within academic departments.
Some commentators, however, argue that greater transparency would strengthen public confidence. Universities routinely publish data on research income, gender balance and internationalisation, yet say little about intellectual diversity. Many academic recruitment and promotion processes now ask candidates how they will contribute to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI). There is rarely an equivalent question asking how they would promote viewpoint diversity or intellectual pluralism.
The issue is not whether universities should pursue ideological quotas; few would support such an approach. Rather, it is whether diversity of ideas should be recognised alongside other forms of diversity as an important component of academic excellence.
The growth of university administration has also become part of this discussion. Modern universities are considerably larger and more complex than they were a generation ago. Offices responsible for compliance, quality assurance, EDI, student support and wellbeing, communications, sustainability and equality perform many necessary functions, but their expansion has prompted questions about whether managerial priorities have grown faster than teaching and scholarship.
The debate about Irish universities ultimately concerns public trust. Institutions that receive substantial taxpayer funding should remain committed to intellectual openness, academic freedom and accountability. Their primary purpose is not to promote particular political or ideological positions, but to advance knowledge and equip students to evaluate competing ideas critically.
Several questions follow naturally. Do Irish universities reflect a sufficiently broad range of intellectual perspectives among their academic staff and senior leadership? Should universities collect and publish information on viewpoint diversity, just as they report on other aspects of institutional diversity? And are students primarily being trained to weigh evidence, challenge assumptions and think independently, or are they increasingly encouraged to become activists by adopting particular interpretive frameworks?
Public universities should also be willing to examine their own institutional assumptions. Universities have an important role in researching and debating claims about racism, inequality and other social issues, but they also have a responsibility to ensure that competing explanations can be explored openly and tested against evidence. Their credibility depends not on avoiding controversial questions, but on demonstrating that no conclusion is beyond critical scrutiny.
Critics argue that universities increasingly focus on teaching students to criticise Western societies, institutions and traditions, while paying far less attention to the achievements that made modern society possible, such as democracy, scientific discovery, technological innovation, economic prosperity and freedom of speech.
In The Diversity Delusion (2018), Heather Mac Donald argues that identity politics and activism have replaced the traditional university mission of pursuing truth and academic excellence. Critics believe universities should teach students to recognise both the successes and failures of society, rather than presenting a one-sided view that encourages activism more than critical thinking.
The issues discussed in this article are to encourage Irish Universities to greater transparency, accountability and intellectual openness. As higher education continues to evolve, several key points emerge:
Séamus Clarke is an Irish academic working in a third-level institution. He writes here under a pen name.
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