Irish Examiner view: UCC ditching CUBS centre highlights crises in third-level education

While the scrapping of the planned business school development is significant enough in itself, Mick Clifford's report also raises some key underlying issues about education funding

A visualisation of UCC's proposed city centre CUBS business school between Copley St and South Terrace on the south channel of the River Lee. Image: G-Net 3D

The scrapping of the Cork University Business School (CUBS) building in Cork City, as reported by Mick Clifford on Saturday, is a reminder that the best laid plans can fall asunder, but that they can still come at a significant cost.

Some €19m has already been spent, between €17m on the Brooks Haughton site and a further €2m on design and related services. Still, better to halt things now than after construction has begun — every public sector project in this country seems to be hit by cost overruns and the simple increase in the cost of building materials. 

There is plenty of scope to still deliver a business school on the site. 

The original plan was for 17,000sq m, but a more modest project may yet arrive. The university says it is committed to the concept and will issue an update next year.

The site itself is still an important asset on the university’s balance sheet. Given the demand for housing and city housing in particular, the university could recoup some of the cost it were to put the site on the market, or develop it for non-academic purposes such as housing it then rents out, mostly likely to students. It has a number of options.

Funding for the business school was to come via a European investment loan, but paying that required significant numbers of foreign students, particularly from China and India, and the Chinese numbers have been in decline.

The end of this plan does not mean anybody — or even any system — is at fault. 

Rather, it is far better to call a halt, or a pause, before throwing more money at a problem without any guarantee of a solution. And this is money being used by a national institution, even if it has its own sources of income from overseas students and the like, so the impetus to spend wisely is greater. 

And, on the back of selling the Institute of Irish Management just a few years after buying it for €20m — the last available figures show the institute running at a deficit of more than €1m in 2023 — it is a black mark against ambitions, but perhaps some measure of sense given what may now be needed, let alone achievable.

Readers may recall how the Arts Council spent a fortune on an IT system before it was ultimately scrapped, and we’ve all seen how the estimated costs of the children’s hospital have not so much crept up as rocketed toward space. That project, at least, will do the citizenry considerable good once up and running. Some values are measured in euro and cent, others in more intangible but just as meaningful ways.

The original argument put forward by UCC, that it would help regeneration of the city centre, has likely been overtaken by events in terms of a housing crisis as well as the vastly increased cost of constructing, well, anything in this country. And plans made for one era — the site was bought in 2019, and the business school announced in 2022 — may not be suitable for another, even if only separated by a short span of years.

As Mick Clifford noted in Saturday’s report, the university has referred to “changes in the provision and delivery of third level education”, which may reflect the post-pandemic reality whereby fewer students might attend lectures (which could feasibly be delivered virtually worldwide) but, perhaps more pertinently, a lack of housing for students.

Without meaning to, the scrapping of the CUBS project (at least in this form) highlights the ongoing crises in the third-level sector: Insufficient funding for institutions, and a dearth of accommodation for the students. There’s no point expanding if there’s nowhere for people — attendees and staff — to live. 

We should not have had to see so much money spent for this to become apparent.

Regrettably, we suspect we will see something like this occur in the future.

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Appreciation for art and culture

It may be odd to look to the past for a way into the future, but historians often make a stab at it, and usually for good reason. It’s a solid way to understand the present in context, to learn lessons (though as a species we frequently make a mess of this), and build communities through shared heritage.

Museums and art galleries are some of the most accessible ways of immersing oneself in a nation’s heritage. Art, in particular, has that quality that transcends boundaries and borders, whereby two people from completely different backgrounds can view the same piece and come away with different perspectives, but a shared admiration, a sort of reminder that we have more in common with each other than we tend to think.

And that works as much for small children as it does to people who have moved to these shores — no doubt it has helped some of our wild geese find their feet while nesting abroad.

In the 'Irish Examiner' in recent days, Arpita Chowdhury noted: “Local museums and galleries are not just for visitors. 

They are vital civic spaces where young people can connect with their country’s story, identity, and creative heritage.

“Identity is not formed only through personal memories. It is shaped by context, by knowing where we come from and what has come before us.  Cultural institutions hold that context. They are the physical archives of a nation’s emotional memory.”

And that memory can come in different forms, and from different backgrounds. An artistic example seems appropriate, given how art crosses borders. 

Cork County Library’s current 'Oh The Thinks You Can Think' exhibition attempts to do just that, with 74 works by 68 artists exploring the thinking behind art. And the council’s arts and library service recently named Basil Al-Rawi and Stephen Brandes as recipients of its inaugural LHQ Impact Award for visual artists.

Brandes is English-born but has lived in Cork for more than 30 years, while Al-Rawi is Irish-Iraqi. Both have carved out international reputations, representing this country at prestigious events worldwide.

And doesn’t that sum up how shared culture, expressed differently, can enhance and celebrate our commonalities?