Trinity turns to foreign donors

TRINITY College Dublin is being forced to rely on foreign donors to fund lecturing posts because of the deepening financial crisis facing the university sector. As it launched an ambitious strategic plan yesterday, TCD - recently rated 43rd best university in the world by The Times Higher Education global rankings - was bracing itself for another 10% cut in its core funding in 2010, on top of a 7.5% decrease to €88m this year.

But all the universities are in dispute with the Higher Education Authority (HEA) and the Department of Education over a stipulation that any exemption from the public service recruitment ban, which allows them to fill up to a third of vacant academic posts, must first be approved by both bodies and the Department of Finance.

While TCD aims to widen its range of courses and increase student numbers by 15% to 18,000 in 2014, it is also having to significantly widen the range of income sources. Prof Patrick Prendergast, Trinity's vice-provost and chief academic officer, said this will include greater numbers of fee-paying non-EU students (now 7% of the student body) and postgraduates, and increasing funding from tourist facilities, catering and accommodation.

"We're also going to have to rely on increased funding from philanthropy, we just appointed a lectureship in natural sciences, for example, with money from an American philanthropic group, McArthur Foundation," he said. "We're having a reduction of about 3% of a total academic staff of around 800 and it's beginning to hit home that we're going to have to find some way of working to ensure the quality of our teaching when our academic numbers are reducing."

He said discussions are continuing between universities and the HEA on the employment control framework on academic posts, but that TCD has not been seeking approval for jobs as it is using other sources. The Irish Examiner reported this month that the institutes of technology have been approved to fill the equivalent of almost 500 academic jobs since July under the new rules, compared to just three in the university sector.