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, according to a report in the Irish Examiner.
As it launched an ambitious strategic plan, 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.
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. Professor 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.”
Trinity Foundation was established in 1994 and is the biggest educational foundation in Ireland.
www.tcd.ie
