The history of higher education in Ireland is inseparable from wider debates around competing ideas of the university and more broadly of the purpose of higher level learning. John Henry Newman first expressed his famous ideal of a liberal university education in Dublin, in a series of lectures entitled Discourses on the Scope and Nature of University education. Newman’s first series of lectures were delivered in May–June 1852 at the invitation of Paul Cullen, the newly appointed archbishop of Dublin and a leading proponent of ultramontane Catholicism, who sought an articulate critique of secular higher education. The Discourses offered a broad vision of university education, informed by a striking mixture of Oxbridge academic tradition and Catholic religious conviction:
That it is a place of teaching universal knowledge. This implies that its object is, on the one hand, intellectual, not moral; and on the other, that it is the diffusion and extension of knowledge rather than the advancement. If its object were scientific and philosophical discovery, I do not see why a University should have students; if religious training, I do not see how it can be the seat of literature and science. 1
Newman conceptualised the university as a place for intellectual formation and the cultivation of knowledge rather than training for the professions or vocational preparation for a useful function in society. Teaching rather than scientific research or ‘discovery’ was at the core of his vision of education. Moreover, his Discourses enunciated a distinctive humanist ideal of the purpose of university education: ‘Knowledge is capable of being its own end. Such is the constitution of the human mind, that any kind of knowledge, if it be really such, is its own reward’. 2 Among Newman’s distinctive contributions to educational thought was to combine this broad conceptualisation of liberal education, influenced by the example of Oxford in the mid nineteenth century, with a defence of the importance of religion within the programme of studies. 3 Newman advanced a subtle argument that while the university was not a centre of religious training, its essential function in teaching ‘universal knowledge’ required the teaching of theology and the separation of religion from secular disciplines was nothing less than the undermining of university education itself: ‘Religious Truth is not only a portion, but a condition of general knowledge. To blot it out is nothing short, if I may so speak, of unravelling the web of University Teaching’. 4 Newman’s ideal was at odds with and in many respects a response to influential political and educational developments in his own time, notably the increasing emphasis on a more utilitarian model of higher education, associated with the foundation of the University of London in 1836 and the Queen’s Colleges in Ireland in the 1840s, which involved the application of learning in a secular context to the practical and scientific challenges of an industrialised society. 5
An equally distinctive and perhaps more influential vision of the university was offered by Wilhelm Von Humboldt’s memorandum on the organisation of ‘intellectual institutions’ in Germany in 1810. 6 Higher intellectual institutions, such as the university, had as their task ‘the cultivation of science and scholarship (Wissenschaft) in the broadest sense’. 7 Von Humboldt envisaged the complementary activities of research and teaching in the service of knowledge as the fundamental attributes of a university: ‘At the higher level…both teacher and student have their justification in the common pursuit of knowledge. The teacher’s performance depends on the students’ presence and interest – without this science and scholarship could not grow.’ 8 The function of the state was to supply the organisational framework and resources for the practice of scholarship while preserving the autonomy of the intellectual life of the university: ‘The state must understand that intellectual work will go on infinitely better if it does not intrude.’ 9 The Humboldtian ideal did not exclude state intervention in the university, but urged that it be kept to a necessary minimum and should avoid interference with the intellectual activity of the university where its intrusion could only be prejudicial. 10 As Neave notes, this vision of autonomy was not always compatible with the increasing vocational demands for professional training in administration and business during the nineteenth century. 11 Yet Humboldt’s ideal influenced the development of the research-oriented university in Germany, which combined a high level of state support and initiative with professorial power and autonomy. 12 Moreover, Humboldt’s characterisation of teaching and research as the central, complementary purposes of the university has had a long-term resonance in shaping both scholarly understandings and institutional organisation of the university in Europe up to the contemporary period.
The Humboldtian ideal of autonomy was not universally accepted in Irish political discourse, where freedom was interpreted in the light of conflicting political or religious allegiances. Sir James Graham, who spearheaded legislation to create the Queen’s Colleges as home secretary in 1845, insisted that the crown should retain the power to appoint and remove professors, ostensibly to protect students from proselytising: ‘security must be taken that …opportunities are not seized of making these lectures the vehicle of any peculiar religious tenets.’ 13 The majority of the British political elite adopted the principle of non-denominational education in Ireland from the mid nineteenth century, with the logical implication of no state endowment for denominational education at higher level. This conversion by the British government occurred just as Catholic opinion in Ireland, led by the Catholic bishops, moved firmly in the opposite direction. Cardinal Cullen, who condemned the ‘godless colleges’ precisely because of their secular, non-denominational status, was remarkably similar to Graham in his demands of any university serving Catholic students. The bishops would require the necessary power to exclude ‘bad books and bad professors’ to protect their co-religionists from proselytising by Protestant denominations or the equally baleful influence of ‘the new sect, of Secularists…’. 14
A distinctively Anglo-Saxon model of the academy, characterised by the absence of formal state regulation and a traditional perception of universities as corporations in a ‘semi-private relationship’ with the state, was also influential in the development of universities in Ireland. 15 Trinity College Dublin, the oldest university in Ireland which was established in 1592 under an Elizabethan charter, was obliged to secure the assent of the crown in relation to the appointment of its provost and amendments to the college statutes from 1637. 16 Yet under the statutes the provost and senior fellows enjoyed a high level of autonomy in managing the affairs of the college and their autonomy was respected by governments throughout the 1800s. The presidents of the Queen’s Colleges were appointed by the government, but enjoyed considerable freedom in their academic affairs within the loose structure of the Royal University (1881–1909). The Irish Universities Act, 1908, gave considerable autonomy to the newly reconstituted National University of Ireland and Queen’s University, Belfast, vesting authority in university senates which following a five year transition period were mainly elected by academics, graduates and professional interests, rather than nominated by the government.
The ‘Irish University Question’
The development of the major universities on the island of Ireland was linked to religious and political divisions rooted in historical conflicts which cast a long shadow well into the twentieth century. Trinity College maintained a monopoly of posts and offices for an Anglican elite until the late nineteenth century: while all religious tests for posts and offices outside its Divinity School were abolished by Fawcett’s Act in 1873, the college remained closely associated with the Protestant ruling class and was a bastion of unionism up to the first world war. 17 The debate over university education was entangled with the wider constitutional struggle over the union during the late nineteenth century. 18 A number of reforming initiatives for university education, embarked on with varying degrees of conviction by British ministers, failed in the face of the incompatible demands of conflicting political and religious forces. The most famous initiative was taken by William Gladstone, who proposed a grand plan for a single federal university in Ir...