This paper presents a historical analysis of the role of the Organisation for Co-operation and Development in Europe (OECD), in shaping the transformation of the higher education system, policies and institutions in Ireland in the early 2000s. As Vaira notes, powerful supranational agencies such as the OECD may serve as ‘institutional carriers’ which promote and disseminate ‘the wider rationalised myths’ of globalisation and define the context in which higher education institutions operate (Vaira, 2004, Walsh, 2018).

The historical study is framed by an analysis of two seminal reports, the review of higher education in Ireland by the OECD (2004) and the national strategy for higher education to 2030 (2011), widely known as the 'Hunt Report'. Both reports are underpinned by a similar ideological vision informed by theories of human capital formation and a shared conviction that higher education should be reformed to contribute effectively to a knowledge based economy. Higher education was positioned as a key determinant of national economic salvation in the Hunt report, which adopted a narrow conceptualisation of human capital theory broadly shared by the OECD.

The study explores the extent to which the national strategy adopted in 2011 constituted an example of 'policy borrowing' (Vaira, 2004) by national political and administrative elites from a dominant international discourse disseminated by the OECD, featuring structural rationalisation at system level, institutional reform to curb the autonomy of universities and more intensive regulation of higher education by state agencies. The process of policy formation by the two expert groups is considered to explore the ideological frameworks which they adopted and the extent to which the reports subscribed to a common reform agenda.

A key question for this paper is the extent to which both the OECD and the national strategy were influenced by neo liberalism and its associated organisational discourse of new public management (NPM). Neo-liberalism, described by Vaira as ‘not only a political rhetoric, or ideology, but a wide project to change the institutional structure of societies at a global level’, was never embraced uncritically by Irish policymakers in the late twentieth century. Both the OECD and the Hunt report in the early 2000s adopted much of the rhetoric of NPM, advocating a more hierarchical, empowered management within higher education institutions; increased accountability mechanisms for academic staff and more intrusive regulation by state agencies. Yet this apparent adoption of NPM within the Hunt report remained partial, coexisting uneasily with explicit support for academic freedom and institutional autonomy, albeit within a restructured higher education sector characterised by ‘directed diversity’.

The paper also gives weight to the differing economic and societal contexts for the two reports: the OECD review was undertaken at a time of relative economic affluence internationally and for the Irish economy, while the Hunt report was completed at the height of the economic crash which ultimately triggered a European-IMF bailout for the Irish state. There were significant limitations to the influence of supranational agencies, not least due to political, regional and fiscal constraints which impinged on national policymakers in an era of crisis. 

The differences between the OECD review and the Hunt report largely reflected pragmatic political decisions on how best to implement shared objectives and values in a distinctive domestic context in which consensual decision-making on a partnership model was the norm and regional and local interests traditionally enjoyed significant influence. This paper will interrogate the shared ideological discourse and policy agenda expressed by both the OECD review and the Hunt report, while also exploring  genuine differences in terms of the process of policy formation and implementation.

This study is based on a documentary analysis of the OECD review of higher education in Ireland and the Hunt report, informed by a wide range of archival sources up to the 1990s which have not previously been exploited in a study of higher education, to provide a robust historical context for the exploration of the reports. The paper is also informed by a detailed literature review of official policy documentation in the early 2000s (including Department of Education and Higher Education Authority reports) and the scholarship on the expansion, massification and reform of higher education in Ireland. The study considers a range of international scholarship on neo-liberalism, narratives of public sector reform and globalisation to evaluate the application of such models to the historical development of higher education in Ireland. The paper is also informed by a number of interviews with key informants, including members of the strategy group which developed the Hunt report. Finally the study is supplemented by a comprehensive study of newspaper articles in the two main national newspapers (the Irish Times and Irish Independent) referring to higher education from 2000 to 2016. This analysis draws upon on published work by the author, particularly a recent monograph on the history of higher education in Ireland (Walsh, 2018).

This paper suggests that the OECD review of higher education exerted a great deal of influence on national policymakers and shaped the vision and policy recommendations set out by the Hunt report. The national strategy reflected many features of the OECD report and was in some respects largely an implementation strategy for the OECD review. Even the more distinctive features of the national strategy, such as the recommendation for technological universities, drew on established international models. Moreover, both reports owed an ideological debt to human capital theory, advocating an explicit repositioning of higher education to serve labour market objectives and expressing a firmly utilitarian conceptualisation of the value of higher education. Yet the OECD review was never simply transposed into the national strategy and the Hunt report did not become a charter for radical ‘reform’ of the higher education system on a neoliberal model. The Hunt report in terms of content and ideology was not particularly radical, instead representing more of an explicit reinforcement, dissemination and clarification of policy frameworks which emerged in the early 2000s, influenced by the OECD review and the subsequent response to economic crisis and austerity. Conflict within the strategy group was a significant factor in diluting its recommendations and encouraging compromise both with university leaders and important regional interest groups which championed the emergence of technological universities. National policymakers did not give a high value to ideological consistency – indeed the HEA explicitly referenced ‘pragmatism’ as a key operational principle of its reform agenda (Walsh, 2018). This pragmatic utilitarianism both facilitated the adoption of policies recommended by the OECD and encouraged an incremental approach which limited the impact of policy change.

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