Universities should take to the ‘lifeboats’

Common wisdom suggests the state will not be ready to co-fund the IMF-EU deal by mid 2012. Another deal will accompany a slash in payments to the social sectors including Education. Is the third level sector ready for such a crisis?

The Irish State pays a core grant to our third-level institutions for each undergraduate student, and, in an equal amount, funds the majority of research and postgraduate fees (scholarships). The latter is managed by a proliferation of various third level education bodies which we label Quangos. The sector has developed an unnaturally high dependency on the public finances. This dependence is currently anywhere between 65 to 88 per cent in most Higher Education Institutes

The funding of third-level Quangos now represent an unsustainable overhead on the sector, as this form of finance flowing from the State is on the decline. The indirect costs or the administrative structures that have mushroomed during the boom (which distributed State money) are now vestigial and are turning into a major financial headache and constraint on the sector. The HEI’s must replace these funds with international research grants and postgraduate students. The Quangos are largely ill equipped to induce and manage this change.

The Universities, while undertaking many good reforms, made the mistake of allowing indirect costs inside universities to grow to over 50 per cent. Frontline lecturers’ salaries now only account for 25 per cent of the overall cost of the sector, when we include the overheads of Quangos. Academic salaries have collapsed by 25 per cent (net) since 2008. Most academic units have also lost up to 15 per cent of their staff via retirements or voluntary quits. These savings are returned and retained by the State and not by the Universities.  The oversized non-academic and undersized academic units are finding it a challenge to refocus efforts into securing funds from outside of Ireland. Academics need to be empowered to make such change happen.

What is the solution proposed by State and its agencies to cope with the current crisis?

An imposed agreement, under the false premises of Croke Park, to increase productivity levels of declining numbers of frontline lecturing staff is their answer. Not surprisingly, these productivity increases can never pay for what are now largely indirect costs in the sector.  New income streams are needed: higher levels of international students who pay fees, more EU and Global research funding successes, and private sources.

Yet, all hiring and promotions (whether funded by the State or not), that have come under the State’s employment control, are now banned. The most recent instalment of employment control wants to redeploy academics within and across institutions. There are even conditions on the nature of research that is allowed. The focus of such is on the disciplines that will drive the smart economy (see http://des-fitzgerald.com/ecf/).

This is a ludicrous attempt to turn academics into public servants. The agents of the State seem to have no idea how knowledge is created and dispersed. Academics in a global market face competition from serious creators of knowledge and find every international student and grant is a hard battle won.  Publishing in the leading journals and university presses is like winning Olympic medals in terms of a lifetime dedication to the cause. Academic credentials need to be first class, a Ph.D. from a top University and ground breaking publications. Academics need the time and space to perform at these levels.  Imposing constraints on academic freedom and tenure will only give our competitors an advantage over us, deter international students and grants from coming here and could rupture our growing reputation in scholarship internationally. The idea that an academic in UCD that gets a research grant from a major donor should first see if there is someone surplus to requirements inside UCD and then search in other universities, or even State departments, before hiring a post-doc clearly indicates to me that the state has no idea how knowledge is created. Incentives are for academics to leave Ireland rather than refocus efforts.

What do we do?

Universities have to realise the State is broke. Just like the State should have understood the Irish Banks were broke, now the Universities have to drop the State like a hot potato (Taxpayers and the IMF-EU would approve).

Trinity by the nature of its charter and academic ownership of its property can break from State faster than most.

The first move would be to establish income streams from undergraduate fees, increase the number of international students and external research income.

Most Universities like Trinity already have private enterprise on campus in terms of the library shop, rented accommodation, a Foundation office and Campus Companies. These could turn a higher profit to fertilise academic scholarship.

The University of Dublin, and the National University of Ireland, could create new colleges. Let’s call the one alongside Trinity College, “Christchurch College”. Christchurch could hire and promote and pay pensions on a private basis funded by the new income streams.  All existing contracts could be honoured by Trinity College.

The nature of self governance in a third-level institution means that academics rule. They can promote academic scholarship, and while doing so they can control all non-academic units and can easily restructure the internal indirect costs over-time and reduce them to less than 30 per cent, retaining these savings to invest in Education and Research.

The top slicing of finance by education Quangos would be removed and most importantly their ability to constrain academic freedom to create knowledge for use in a global society would come to a deserved end.

Some universities have endowments and assets that could buy the limited time to achieve such academic and financial security.

Even if the State does not default the case for the third-level institutions to break away from the influence of the State and its agencies is growing with every minute.

The Irish State is a sinking ship and academics need to escape on lifeboats labelled ‘University Charters for use when Academic Scholarship is put at risk from the State, Church or private interests’.  The Founders’ bequest throughout the centuries gives academics an instrument for use when academic scholarship is threatened. Academics need to use it now.

Colm McCarthy: Terms of the bailout deal are not unfair — they are impractical

I’ll take my turn linking to Colm McCarthy’s agenda-setting column in the Sunday Independent (available here).    

While I don’t find much to disagree with in Colm’s piece, I worry that some readers might come away with the sense that default provides a relatively painless solution to our problems, which I don’t at all think is Colm’s view.   

A few thoughts:  First, it would of course be wonderful if a Europe-wide solution to the banking problem is pursued, one involving other countries absorbing a large chunk of our banking losses.   It is unlikely to happen.  

Second, some hold the view that defaulting on State-guaranteed bank debt (ELG) would be less costly than defaulting on State bonds.   It would be good to see more discussion of why the reputational and balance sheet contagion costs would be less as a result of defaulting on State guarantees, especially given that available numbers indicate more than half of the bank bonds are held domestically.  

Third, we have to recognise that part of the reason that the perceived default risk is so high is the perception that an orderly default will in fact be organised as per Colm’s advice.   An orderly creditor “bail-in” – one supported by Europe and the IMF and probably involving additional funding – would indeed be less costly than the disorderly alternative.    But making defaults less costly raises the expectation that a default will actually occur and thus raises the risk premium.    We can see potentially self-fulfilling expectations of a default equilibrium emerging. 

Fourth, we have to recognise that a more organised system of creditor bail-ins that makes it easier to restructure debt will itself make market access harder in the future. 

Colm is right that the current bail-out mechanisms are deeply flawed and make exiting our creditworthiness crisis daunting to say the least.   It would be a mistake, however, to conclude that there is some painless alternative that is not being taken because of stupidity or even politics.   There are no easy solutions.   We may end up going the default route.   But given the costs of this route, the alternative of an assisted drive to shift expectations to the no-default equilibrium should not be too quickly set aside. 

Kenny Returns from Brussels

Enda Kenny has returned from Brussels without any agreement yet to reduce Ireland’s interest rate (Irish Times story here and FT story here). Not surprisingly, Mr. Kenny wasn’t too keen to give up Ireland’s 12.5% corporate tax rate in return for a mere one percent reduction in the interest rate on the EU loans.

To my mind, there is a lot of shadow boxing going on here. The EFSF is an EU institution and it cannot set the terms of its lending on a bilateral basis with individual countries. I’d be surprised if thee tradeoff between these two elements ended up being as explicit as suggested in this weekend’s news stories.

I think the business about interest rates and corporation tax rates has a feel of fiddling while Rome burns. More interesting were Kenny’s comments about the ECB:

“I made the point that for me to conclude a deal here I need to be much clearer in respect of elements related to the ECB,” he said.

“I spoke to president Jean-Claude Trichet and the Minister for Finance will be meeting with him on Monday. He has agreed that I should meet with him before the [next EU summit on March] 24th/25th to discuss a number of issues relating to the ECB and its positions.

“Before the council meets again in two weeks time we hope to be in a much clear position insofar as Ireland’s position is concerned and continue on our progress arising from the mandate that I’ve got about an improvement in the terms of the package for Ireland,” the Taoiseach said.

He continued: “In the next couple of weeks I expect to be in a much clearer position in respect of the state of what we have inherited is in respect of Ireland’s position.

“We’ll have had discussions with the ECB in respect of a number of matters. We’ll have a much clearer picture of what’s emerging from the stress tests and as the principle has now been accepted and implemented of a reduction in the interest rate I . . . would regard that actually as the beginning of a process.”

I reckon they could fill Croke Park if they sold tickets for those discussions with the ECB.

Directed technological change

One of the things that has always marked out economic history as a subfield within economics is its focus on the economics of technological change. The Habbakuk thesis held that the high wage environment of the United States helps explain the nature of that country’s technological progress in the 19th century, and Bob Allen has recently argued that high wages and cheap energy are key to understanding the British Industrial Revolution.

I was pleased to see John Bruton referring to this in his recent LSE speech.

Since this is the weekend, here is another example of directed technological change (or at least, such is Roger Cohen’s interpretation), this time from Denmark.

Bini-Smaghi: Whither Europe after the Crisis?

Lorenzo sure is busy giving speeches these days. Here‘s his latest. Some highlights:

Recently, a former Irish Prime Minister has even had the honour of front page headlines when he reproached the ECB for not having sufficiently monitored the Irish banking system when it is well known that in Europe the powers of prudential supervision are the responsibility of the national authorities, a competence that you do not want to give up.

And it’s not only former Irish Prime Ministers that get a tongue-lashing. Current heads of state also:

The piecemeal approach followed in recent months risks losing sight of the long-term goal. The measures may not be completely coherent. We came close to it last autumn, with the Franco-German proposal, endorsed by other countries, to make it easier for countries to go bankrupt. Fortunately, the idea has not gained acceptance, not only because of the ECB’s dislike but also because of the devastating effect it has had on financial markets. It will take time to recover from the loss of credibility suffered by Europe with that proposal.

The proposal was based on the assumption that the best way to discipline governments and to ensure sounder public finances is to make it easier for a country to declare bankruptcy. As soon as a country has problems with its public finances, it should seek a restructuring of its debts or automatically extend its bond maturities as a necessary condition for receiving help from European and international institutions.

This idea is mistaken for several reasons.

Read it yourself to see if you’re convinced by Lorenzo’s vision of a default-free Europe.