Heated argument

The UCC president wanted to discuss how to help gifted students but could have framed his words more wisely, says Education Correspondent Niall Murray

WHEN Michael Murphy decided it was time to kickstart a debate on supports for the most academically gifted students a little over three weeks ago, he could hardly have anticipated the level of engagement that has followed.

At a breakfast event for Cork’s business leaders, the president of the city’s university chimed the expected bells about the underfunding of higher education and echoed complaints of fellow third-level leaders about unfair Government interference in the day-to-day running of their colleges.

However, it was comments about the use of resources to support students from disadvantaged backgrounds or with disabilities that sparked controversy within and beyond the gates of UCC. Despite his efforts this week to clarify to his own staff what he intended to be understood from his speech, there is still anger over the underlying theme.

Dr Murphy says that a reading from his speech that he inferred those non-traditional students were academically weaker is absurd. And he said in a letter on UCC’s internal email system on Tuesday that he was not intimating the shifting of all those resources for access students to the needs of the most gifted, despite that understanding being taken from it.

He was responding directly to an open letter from more than 30 academics at UCC’s School of Applied Social Studies, who added their voices to earlier criticisms from a group of 25 people mostly at other universities.

But if it is the case that he has been misinterpreted by the media (who he told UCC staff had reported the speech “mischievously”), a range of intelligent academics and others, then the fault lies in his own choice of words and how he structured them. He did not contact the Irish Examiner to have the reporting of his speech clarified or seek the opportunity to respond to letters published in this newspaper about his speech.

A group which lobbies for and helps colleges to provide greater assistance to students with disabilities stands over its criticisms of Dr Murphy’s comments. Ann Heelan, executive director of Association for Higher Education Access and Disability (AHEAD), said she read his full speech carefully before forming her views and they remain unchanged.

She believes he has, intentionally or otherwise, revealed an underlying belief she considers to be held among many third level leaders that the traditional student is the better student.

“All that Dr Murphy has done is surface the underlying assumption that is there in the system. Obviously there are a lot of people who don’t believe it to be that way but the more senior you go, the wider the belief.”

Ms Heelan believes the UCC president was correct about resources in third level colleges getting tighter, but that the campaign of most higher education chiefs to have student fees reintroduced to counter falls in funding is a separate political issue.

Despite Dr Murphy reaffirming that he thinks some — but not all — supports for mature, disadvantaged of disabled students should be diverted to the academically gifted (which may include many within those groups), the AHEAD boss, who believes UCC has the best record for helping students with disabilities, does not find it acceptable to suggest cutting supports.

“I think it was a ‘Rob Peter to pay Paul’ [suggestion]. Many colleges are slow to change lecture or exam structures, but there would be less reliance on supports for students with disability if some of them were embedded.”

She alluded to standard practice at some colleges where lecturers provide class notes online, so dedicated notetakers are not required for some students with disabilities. Or, she suggests, colleges could seek deals with publishers for electronic versions of books to save the cost of scanning them for reading software to help blind students.

Dr Murphy has made no public comment about criticisms of his speech. However, in a radio interview with RTÉ on the day his speech was first reported, and before criticisms emerged, he said newspapers report every August how top point-scorers in the Leaving Certificate were finding destinations overseas and that academic colleagues told him they were sending their children to overseas universities.

The evidence is merely “anecdotal”, as he said himself, but he also outlined his experience of efforts to get staff to give extra help to students at the top range of the academic spectrum.

“There’s a tendency to describe what I’m setting out as an effort to promote elitism or to return to the elitism that might have been seen here 30 or 40 years ago,” he said.

“I find that convincing staff to divert their energies or to invest more energies to develop the kinds of special programmes that are needed by these students, I find a resistance that is derived from, I would say, a fear to be seen to be politically incorrect.”

The special needs of the country’s most gifted young minds may well be inadequately supported, leaving them under-challenged and unmotivated. And it may not just be at third level, given, for example, the withdrawal of Department of Education funding in 2009 for the Centre for Talented Youth in Ireland (which ironically, used a big proportion of its annual €97,000 grant to help gifted students from poorer homes attend its classes).

If there are issues around how the wider education system nurtures our most capable young academic talent, Dr Murphy was right to try and initiate a debate. Sadly, the context in which he raised it has only served to distract, and maybe even detract, from his core argument.

Special supports

THIS is the part of Michael Murphy’s December 20 speech which has created controversy:

Over the past 15 years, the state has rightly promoted expansion of higher education to ever larger proportions of the population and has introduced strong programmes to make higher education accessible to disadvantaged minorities. I am pleased to say that UCC leads the sector in the proportion of our student population assisted through social disadvantage, physical disability and lifelong learning support programmes.

However, there has been a price which has become increasingly evident. It has become unpopular, indeed politically incorrect, to voice concerns about the needs of academically talented students. In my youth when resources were particularly scarce, care was taken to create opportunities for the brightest students through a variety of scholarship programmes.

Today, following expansion and democratisation of higher education, bringing into the universities significant numbers of academically weaker students, with greater need for more academic support from fewer available staff, our ability to maximise the talents of the intellectually gifted have diminished. There is extensive anecdotal evidence of many of our brightest students emigrating after completing Leaving Certificate for overseas education, and never returning.

There is, in my view, a requirement to rebalance the portfolio of special support systems to include recognition of the needs of those who, properly supported, will most likely deliver discoveries and innovations that will create whole new fields of human endeavour and new economic paradigms.